Today, UMNO and PAS no longer support him to be PM. And neither do PKR, DAP and Amanah. It's not clear what the East Malaysian parties stance is right now but let's assume they haven't changed and still support him. Couple that with support from Bersatu and Azmin's faction and all that he's got are: 18 (GPS) + 9 (Warisan) + 26 (Bersatu) + 11 (Azmin's faction) = 64. That's not even half of what's needed to form a majority in parliament.
Pakatan Harapan parties have decided to go with Anwar. What they have is 42 (DAP) + 39 (PKR) + 11 (Amanah) = 92. That's not enough to form a majority but it's a whole lot more than 64.
So, what's going to happen next? Most likely a mad scramble to form a minority government. Dr M needs to find 48 MPs from somewhere to join his so-called "unity government" idea while PH needs to find 20 MPs.
Dr M has ruled out UMNO and PAS en bloc but is willing to take in individuals, so perhaps he can try to find a few in UMNO and a few in PAS to join him. But will they do so knowing that he's got quite a mountain to climb to get to 48?
Without PH supporting him it's hard to imagine him being able to rustle up enough additional MPs to achieve that elusive 112 figure.
It's much easier to imagine PH achieving that. If Warisan + UPKO decide to resume supporting PH like it did before the collapse, that's another 10 already. It's worth noting that while Warisan has publicly said it supports Dr M, it has not officially renounced its support of PH.
If PH can get Warisan to renew that support they need to find just another 10 more. The most obvious way would be to convince at least 10 from GPS to support PH instead of Dr M. Or it could be to get a few from GPS, a few from UMNO, a few from PAS and a few from Bersatu to break ranks and join a minority government.
It won't be easy but getting 10 others to support a minority government is a smaller hill to climb than the mountain that Dr M has to get over to achieve his unity government concept.
It's never a wise thing to underestimate Dr M but perhaps this is the first time in his political career that he clearly overplayed his hand. Without PH's support (which amounts to a whopping 92 seats), he will not be able to get the numbers.
Yet he thought he had the upper hand and refused to attend their meeting to try to restore the PH government, which is what the rakyat voted for in GE14. Restoring PH after his own party and Azmin's faction brought it down, would be the honorable thing to do. Instead, he decided to bulldoze ahead with his unity government concept.
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