PAS: A big NO to Umno!

Some grassroots PAS members are in favour of PAS joining up with Umno but PAS leaders have firmly rejected this move.

COMMENT

Of all the three parties in Pakatan Rakyat, PAS has the least impressive performance in the 13th general election although they worked the hardest.

Their less than stellar performance could be attributed to the fact that they had to deal with the most challenging group of voters – the rural Malays who are lacking in truthful information and access to the internet and are solely dependent on the mainstream media.

Taking into account all these obstacles plus a few tactical blunders, it is to their credit that they still managed to win 21 parliamentary seats, two down from the 23 they obtained in 2008.

From the outsiders’ point of view, the worst thing that could have happened to PAS was the defeat of its moderate faction leaders in the parliament seats.

Those who lost were PAS deputy president, Mohamd Sabu who lost in Pendang, Kedah, vice-president Husam Musa who lost in Putrajaya, another vice-president Salahuddin Ayub who lost in Pulai, Johor and Dzulkefly Ahmad who did not manage to defend his Kuala Selangor seat.

Dzulkefly is widely regarded as chief of the moderate faction and his lost is a great blow to this group. However, he holds the post of PAS Research Director and this means that he still has got some clout.

It is a known fact that PAS spiritual advisor, Tok Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat values Dzulkefly’s opinion. He and Salahuddin will be in charge of conducting a post-mortem to analyse PAS’ performance in the hustings.

With Dzulkefly’s loss, it now looks like Khalid Samad, who successfully defended his Shah Alam seat, will have to lead the moderates.

On the ulama side, one of their top leaders, Haron Din lost when he was defeated in the parliament seat of Arau in Perlis. However one of the top moderates, Hanipa Maidin, who is also the PAS legal counsel, won the parliament seat of Sepang by defeating Umno bigwig, Mohd Zin Mohamed. Mohd Zin was one of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s point-man in Selangor.

Joining Umno

Some grassroots PAS members doubtless are in favour of PAS joining up with Umno but PAS leaders have firmly rejected this move.

Many outsiders would also think that with the huge defeats suffered by the moderate faction, the ulama faction will now press forward the agenda of joining with Umno but this is definitely not true at all.

Below are comments this columnist have obtained from the ulama faction.

The first comment comes from Ustaz Haron Din who remarked that although PAS bigwigs lost, Umno bigwigs such as former Malacca Chief Minister Mohd Ali Rustam also lost in the battle for the parliament seat of Bukit Katil and former Johor Menteri Besar, Abdul Ghani Othman lost in the parliament seat of Gelang Patah.

Worst of all, MCA and Gerakan, two of BN’s top component parties also suffered terrible losses.

Haron opines that the loss suffered by PAS bigwigs will not cause PAS to stumble in their struggle as losing is nothing unusual for PAS leaders.

PAS Youth chief, Ustaz Nasrudin Hassan Tantawi who contested and won in the parliament seat of Temerloh in Pahang against Umno’s Saifuddin Abdullah (former deputy higher education minister) has said that PAS joining up with Umno is only a joke and those calling for it will not affect PAS.

Nasruddin is of the view that PAS will not join Umno as Umno is still oppressing the Kelantan PAS state government in regard to the payment of the oil royalties and also oppressing the Pakatan-helmed states.

Therefore the issue of unity with Umno should not be brought up as long as the oppression continues.

“Umno is the one who is in difficulty due to the dismal performance of the BN component parties and therefore this unity issue comes up again. Unity will never happen as long as Umno continues with its same policies,” stressed Nasrudin.

Dzulkefly remarked that working with Umno does not mean that Umno will improve its behaviour but rather Umno’s behaviour might affect PAS.

Instead, he suggested that everyone should work together to free this nation from corruption instead of talking about Umno and PAS co-operation.

Ustaz Hadi Awang, the PAS president who successfully defended his parliament seat of Marang and state seat of Rhu Rendang in Terengganu mentioned that if one goes near a drowning man, he too will drown when the drowning man grabs at him.

Ustaz Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, the PAS information chief who lost in the state seat of Jengka in Pahang noted that the unity issue always crops up before and after general elections when Umno is in difficulty.

“PAS will certainly not join Umno because we know Umno well and we know that they have more bad points than good points,” commented Tuan Ibrahim.

The number game

As usual, Tok Guru Nik Aziz rejected the idea outright and this time he labelled it as “an evil intention by those proposing it”.

It must be noted that parliament has a total of 222 seats. Therefore 148 seats is the two third majority.

Thus if PAS joins Umno, BN will have a comfortable two third majority of 154 seats.

This shows clearly that although PAS has the least number of seats in Pakatan Rakyat, PAS holds one of the keys to Umno’s power and therefore PAS is the most powerful in Pakatan – not bad at all for the component party in Pakatan with the fewest seats!

Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist.