PAS – making the right choice

Will there be ‘an arrangement of sorts’ between PAS and Umno after the general election at the expense of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition?

COMMENT

There are many in PAS who will not have Anwar Ibrahim as their prime minister. Many also see PAS’ alliance with DAP and PKR as a necessary evil if they are to be relevant in politics at the national level.

There are many still within PAS who have begun to vocally question the need of these “arrangements” when there is a willing and able ally in Umno which can deliver far more than what DAP and PKR can deliver to PAS.

An ally racially and religiously in sync with PAS – an ally that will allow them to keep Kelantan, Kedah and give them Terengganu. So why, they ask, are they in Pakatan Rakyat and not with Umno?

Of course, the state of PAS politics and the politics in the states under PAS is really the business of PAS and nobody else, except when it concerns the state of Pakatan and the state of our nation. And what is happening in PAS today concerns all of us.

PAS with its overtones of Islam, slightly masked by its overtones of political expediency, is now increasingly unable to internally contain the ever-widening divide of these factions within PAS that see this 13th general election as the definitive moment for each of their varying ideology to be tested and proven in order to achieve what they are all agreed upon: to establish Malaysia as a country based on Islamic legal theory derived from the primary sources of Islam, the Quran, Sunnah as well as Hadiths.

So wither goes PAS ulamas and its technocrats? Wither goes this Islamist political party that has a loyal membership of over one million, strong organisational structure and an ability to source for funding that is the envy of its coalition partners within Pakatan?

Wanting a win-win situation

As I have said previously, politics demand much more than what the aged can give and PAS has an abundance of this in Nik Aziz Nik Mat, Hadi Awang and Azizan Abdul Razak.

For the moment, their absence from PAS’ first-tier leadership is unthinkable only because its second echelon of leaders are still sorting out their allegiance to the ranks of the ulamas or the technocrats within PAS.

Do not be distracted by the claims of either factions that the other has compromised too much or too little in the name of political or religious expediency – these are but the nuances of individuals promoting their individual agendas.

What is reality is the existence of opposing factions within PAS that now have real choices to make in the run-up to and after the 13th general election.

What choices PAS will make will depend on the numbers it has allied to or against what Pakatan has to offer PAS and what Umno has to offer PAS.

How will PAS ensure that heads they win and tails they win too?

This they can only do when they have sorted out among themselves which factions have the numbers to make the “right” choice for PAS.

Until then the bickering and the arguments will be contained within PAS with the intermittent leakages by those who seek to have their voices heard by the “masses” – something even PAS cannot prevent from happening despite the Islamic vows and oath-taking it requires of those who are its members

Our worry is whether PAS’ cry of “Jom Sertai PAS” and “PAS untuk semua” is a sincere and heartfelt invitations to all of us to be with PAS in its struggle for open, responsible, accountable government for the people.

Or are they merely the savvy sloganeering of a PAS totally in sync with the need to appeal to the broader electorate masses that see any attempts at religious or ethnic divisions as a definite no-go area?

Achieving political power

As in all things politics in Malaysia, real and imagined threats to race and religion abound everywhere we deem to look. And PAS is no exception.

Pragmatism or Islamic theocracy? Liberal democracy of the West or political Islam which emphasises conformity to Islamic tenets?

Will this breakaway group from Umno, PMIP, that has now become PAS, see ultimately “an arrangement of sorts” between PAS and Umno that will be activated win or lose for PAS in the 13th general election at the expense of its Pakatan coalition?

After all, the be all and end all of being in politics is really to achieve political power… is it not?

Not even the all-consuming zeal of dislodging a corrupt and oppressive Barisan Nasional regime may be allowed to dismiss this need of political power for an ageing PAS leadership and over-ambitious younger professionals now both robustly fighting for control within PAS.

And as always in politics, it is the numbers that you have with you that will decide. And so too will it be with PAS.

CT Ali is a reformist who believes in Pakatan Rakyat’s ideologies. He is a FMT columnist.