COMMENT | "Do you want Najib to return?" I get this message from Pakatan Harapan partisans very often. Certain phrases and words – "Do you want Najib to return?", "1MDB", "global kleptocracy" and "fake news" – have achieved a kind of totemic significance for the Harapan political elite.

In Malaysia, we are more inclined to re-elect kleptocrats than to jail them. As far as Najib Abdul Razak's return is concerned, I suppose if you are a politician who has invested a lot in seeing the former Umno Grand Poo-bah in an orange jumpsuit, you may very well be in trouble if the shoe returns to the other foot.

If BN is voted in democratically, or if the realignment of Malay power structures results in Najib evading jail time, the average rakyat will certainly not be in the crosshairs of whoever crawls to the top of the dung heap that is mainstream Malaysian politics.

BN will attempt to spin their “victory” (however they engineer it) as a reaffirmation of the social contract and, no doubt, life will proceed as normal with the assaults on public institutions and public spaces, continuing much like how Harapan attempts to do so now.

I would rather Harapan be a one-term reformist government rather than be kicked out by voter apathy or anger because it continues to slip into a neo-BN stupor. If the majority kicks out a reformist Harapan government, then at least progressive forces in this country would not have squandered an opportunity to create a "new Malaysia" but were thwarted by those who want to live in a fascist state.