Malaysia's opposition parties, which recently agreed to form an Alternative Front to combat the ruling National Front coalition, are among the strangest bedfellows politics has ever made.
Their disparateness will make it hard for them to more than dent the parliamentary power of the dominant United Malays National Organisation (Umno) and its partners.
Two main parties, Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) and the Democratic Action Party (DAP) are the unlikeliest allies. PAS is led by Islamic clerics and teachers and promotes a fundamentalist brand of Islam that is totally at odds with the Chinese-led DAP's secularism.
The third component, the National Justice Party (Keadilan), was formed earlier this year by Wan Azizah Ismail to promote the policies of her husband, Anwar Ibrahim, the jailed former deputy prime minister, and to back his claim to being the victim of a high-level political conspiracy.
PAS, the DAP and Keadilan, together with the tiny Malaysian People's Party, issued a joint manifesto and agreed Anwar should be prime minister if they came to power.
The manifesto did not include any reference to the creation of an Islamic state, which has been a key policy of PAS and is anathema to the DAP.