Utusan blames Anwar, DAP for PAS ulamas’ electoral defeat

Pas newly elected deputy president and vice presidents pose with Hadi Awang (second left) at the party’s muktamar yesterday. — Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, June 5 — Utusan Malaysia has blamed Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the DAP for the ulama group’s losses in the PAS party elections over the weekend, saying today it showed the opposition leader was the real power in the Islamist party.

Columnist Awang Selamat, a pseudonym for its editors, said both PKR and DAP have been working this past year to influence the PAS party polls where incumbent deputy president Nasharudin Mat Isa lost to popular grassroots leader Mohamed Sabu.

“The most satisfied and happy is Anwar and DAP strongman Lim Kit Siang. They can both smile widely in their sleep as their strategy has become a reality,” Awang Selamat wrote inMingguan Malaysia, the Umno newspaper’s weekend edition today.

Utusan had been at the forefront of a campaign this past week to support the ulamas or scholars group in the PAS elections but Mohamed led a group of professionals to sweep the party top posts and nearly half of the central working committee. It had also supported unity moves between Umno and PAS, which the Islamist party has again firmly rejected this year.

Awang said he has written numerous times that the most powerful man in PAS is Anwar, followed by party spiritual leader Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat and then its president, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, adding Hadi had long lost his grip in the party.

“He is the weakest PAS president until outside elements can easily enter and manipulate the party. This has never happened in history that PAS has been polluted by foreign influence

“Hadi, like Nik Aziz, acceded to Kit Siang and Anwar’s strategy. Islam is no more the basis of struggle but now its ego and political desire,” the columnist wrote.

He pointed out the moral issue of Anwar as Opposition Leader was not even touched by Hadi in his policy speech, showing that PAS had compromised with repeated sexual offences in an allusion to Anwar’s sodomy cases and alleged appearance in a sex clip.

“Awang believes there are no other Islamist party in the world which takes a similar stand like PAS in this serious moral issue,” he added.

Awang also said Hadi had missed the opportunity to analyse issues on Islamic interest but distracted the delegates by criticising Umno, its political foe.

“He has given the wrong signal to the entire Muslim ummah who are hoping for strategic thinking from PAS to ensure political Islam’s strength. The reality is Hadi and Nik Aziz have allowed PAS to be manipulated by DAP which doesn’t want a dominant Islam through its equality agenda.

“This is an insult and sabotage to Islam itself,” Awang said.

But Awang said he was relieved that several PAS leaders including its Dewan Ulama chief Datuk Harun Taib remained brave to defend PAS from being under the thumb of its allies although the ulamas had appeared to lose power.

“Awang believes they will rise again one day. There are many PAS members and supporters at the grassroots who support ulamas as the core of the struggle,” he said, adding the Muslim majority will make its feelings known at the coming general election as it did in the past few by-elections.

“Not difficult. Especially for a party that has failed to bring the pulse of the Muslim ummah,” Awang said in the Umno newspaper.