IN the course of his wide-ranging interview with Bernama on the weekend, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi reiterated the suggestion he floated at the Gerakan delegates' conference, that the Barisan Nasional might consider opening its doors to the membership of those who abide by BN's ethos and wish to be actively included in it, but cannot see themselves as members of any of the coalition's constituent parties.

This would seem to acknowledge that "aracialism", as opposed to "multiracialism", has come of age in this country; that there now exists a significant constituency of Malaysians who do not define themselves first by race, and that this contributed to the retreat of the old BN/Alliance model in the last general election. This constituency may also have conduced to the Pakatan Rakyat's gains, with multiracialism being a carefully constructed pillar of the grouping's platform, and Abdullah's overture was a tentative step towards the BN rolling with that flow.

The worm in the bud is that this notion is not new, and history offers a fair record of why it has never worked as hoped. In our society, every effort to deracialise party politics, from Datuk Onn Jaafar's founding misadventure with an Umno in which he wanted the "M" to stand for "Malayan", through the ideological bases of the Worker's Party and the various socialist parties of the past, to present-day vehicles such as Gerakan, the People's Progressive Party, the Democratic Action Party and Parti Keadilan Rakyat, has sooner or later found that birds of a feather flock together, or that oil and water do not mix, or that chalk and cheese make for an indigestible sandwich.

Even the idea of opening Umno to non-Malay members has been heard again, however, amid the party grassroots' deliberations following the polls. Indeed, the BN itself has dabbled with "associate membership" before, only to have the experiment flounder on an absence of mechanisms to accommodate such members. They had neither role nor standing, existing briefly in a curious limbo before vanishing into irrelevance.

Still, that the aracial idea is far more durable than most attempts to realise it indicates an idea awaiting its time. Has that time arrived? The evidence would seem to the contrary, with Malaysian society apparently more polarised than ever. Aracialistic politics remains a hopeful ideal, but it can only manifest if it honestly reflects the reality of this country. That has been why the race-based parties have lasted this long.