When enemies shake hands
Across continents, alliances have usually emerged when a dominant ‘common enemy’ threatens to push other political parties to the margins, forcing erstwhile foes to unite or risk political extinction
In politics, memory is often short and principles are flexible. Parties that spend years denouncing one another as corrupt, unpatriotic or ideologically dangerous discover a sudden talent for compromise.
This phenomenon, where bitter rivals join forces to win elections or govern, is commonly described as a "marriage of convenience" or, more bluntly, "realpolitik". Across continents, these alliances usually emerge when a dominant "common enemy" threatens to push others to the margins, forcing erstwhile foes to unite or risk political extinction.
South Asia offers some of the clearest examples.
In Pakistan, the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) spent three decades trading accusations of corruption and misrule, their rivalry personified by the Sharif and Bhutto families.
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Yet in 2022, ideological hostility gave way to necessity. United under the banner of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), they joined hands to oust Imran Khan through a no-confidence motion. The partnership continued after the 2024 elections, with both parties again forming a coalition government, less out of shared vision than shared fear of Khan's PTI returning to power.
India's opposition followed a similar logic in 2024. Parties that fight each other bitterly at state level — the Indian National Congress, the Left Front in states like Kerala and West Bengal, and the Aam Aadmi Party — came together nationally under the I.N.D.I.A. (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) bloc.
Their aim was singular: to challenge the dominance of the BJP. India has seen this script before. In 1977, socialists, right-wing nationalists and former Congress rebels merged to form the Janata Party, united solely to defeat Indira Gandhi after the Emergency.
Bangladesh's political history is rich with such contradictions as well. In 1990, the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) stood shoulder to shoulder in the mass uprising that toppled military ruler Hussain Muhammad Ershad.
Less than two decades later, the Awami League formed the "Grand Alliance" with Ershad's Jatiya Party to win the 2008 elections.
Earlier still, in 1996, the Awami League aligned with its ideological opposite, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, to secure electoral victory.
The pattern continues. In 2025, the newly formed National Citizen Party (NCP) announced an alliance with Jamaat, describing it as "strategic, not ideological". Before that, NCP, AB Party and Rashtra Shangskar Andolon launched an alliance for the 2026 national polls, only for it to collapse after just 20 days, making it arguably the shortest-lived alliance in the country's political history.
In Southeast Asia, Malaysia's Unity Government illustrates how old grudges can be suspended overnight. Anwar Ibrahim's Pakatan Harapan (PH) spent 25 years defining itself in opposition to UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (BN).
These alliances rarely last forever, and they seldom erase distrust. But they reveal a hard truth about politics: ideology often yields to ballot arithmetic, and enemies can become partners when survival is at stake. In the end, power has a way of softening even the loudest denunciations, at least until the next election.
Anwar himself was sacked and imprisoned under the UMNO government beginning in 1998. Yet after a hung parliament in 2022, PH and BN joined forces to block the rise of the conservative Perikatan Nasional bloc, transforming sworn enemies into governing partners.
Germany's Grand Coalition between the centre-right CDU/CSU and centre-left SPD, formed repeatedly between 2005 and 2021, has often been justified as a mathematical necessity when smaller parties failed to deliver a majority. The cost is a hollowed-out opposition.
Israel's 2021 Government of Change pushed the logic further. Parties spanning the far right (Yamina), the centre (Yesh Atid), the left (Meretz) and even an Arab Islamist party (Ra'am) united despite disagreeing on almost everything just to end Benjamin Netanyahu's 12-year premiership.
The US, with its winner-take-all system, rarely sees formal coalitions. But even there, history records moments of convenience. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln ran for re-election in 1864 under the National Union Party, bringing together Republicans and War Democrats. His choice of Andrew Johnson, a pro-Union Democrat, as vice-president was a symbolic alliance between ideological opposites, bound by the single aim of preserving the Union.
In South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) stood on opposite sides of history for three decades, the ANC as the party of liberation, the DA as its sharpest critic, often portrayed as representing white and neo-liberal interests.
Yet after the ANC lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in May 2024, it formed a Government of National Unity with the DA to block more radical forces such as the EFF and MK. Many saw it as a tectonic shift in post-apartheid politics.
Kenya's politics, long dominated by the rivalry between the Kenyatta and Odinga families, took a dramatic turn in 2018. After elections marred by violence in 2007 and 2017, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his longtime rival Raila Odinga stunned the nation with a public 'handshake'. The alliance was framed as a move to heal the country, and it sidelined Kenyatta's own deputy, William Ruto, demonstrating how reconciliation and calculation can intertwine.
In Turkey, ideological divides appeared equally insurmountable. The secular, Kemalist CHP historically sought to suppress political Islam, yet in 2023, it joined the nationalist IYI Party and the Islamist Saadet Party as part of the six-party Table of Six. Their shared goal was to defeat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, even welcoming breakaway parties led by his former ministers.
In France's 2024 snap elections, President Emmanuel Macron's centrists and the far-left New Popular Front, locked in bitter conflict over pensions and policing just months earlier, formed a tactical Republican Front. More than 200 candidates withdrew to prevent the far-right National Rally from capitalising on a split vote.
In Greece, the far-left Syriza governed with the nationalist, right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL) after 2015, united solely by opposition to EU-imposed austerity.
These alliances rarely last forever, and they seldom erase distrust. But they reveal a hard truth about politics: ideology often yields to arithmetic, and enemies can become partners when survival is at stake. In the end, power has a way of softening even the loudest denunciations, at least until the next election.
