PAS-DAP: A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL

This is a very important point that the voters would certainly like to know. So it is the duty of PAS Baru a.k.a. Harapan Baru to tell us that if Pakatan Rakyat 2.0 were to capture Kelantan and Terengganu then Hudud is going to be flushed down the toilet.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I remember that I gave a talk to a PAS forum in Malacca 15 years ago in June 2000, and I posed the following questions:

(1) Was PAS compatible with democracy?

(2) Was PAS compatible with pluralism?

(3) Was PAS compatible with human rights?

(4) Was PAS compatible with cultural diversity?

(5) Was PAS compatible with women’s rights, the principle of equality for women including women’s access to public office and public life?

(6) Was PAS compatible with development and modernity?

When Hadi and the PAS leadership turned their back on the Pakatan Rakyat Common Policy Framework, they were giving negative answers to these six questions I posed 15 years ago. (Lim Kit Siang, 23rd July 2015)

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Pakatan Rakyat 2.0 is actually going to be the fourth opposition coalition for DAP in 25 years.

The first coalition was between DAP and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s Semangat 46 and was calledGagasan Rakyat. That was formed in 1990.

Semangat 46 was supposed to have been called Umno Malaysia. However, the RoS rejected that name because Umno Baru wanted to use ‘Umno’. So the name was changed to Semangat 46. The ‘46’ means 1946, the year Umno was formed. Hence Semangat 46 meant the spirit of Umno.

Technically, Gagasan Rakyat was a coalition between DAP and Umno Malaysia a.k.a. Semangat 46.

The second coalition was called Barisan Alternatif (Alternative Front), which was formed just before the November 1999 general election with PKN (now PKR), DAP, PAS and PRM (which later ‘merged’ with PKN to become PKR).

That second coalition lasted only two years, though, because DAP left Barisan Alternatif in September 2001 and the coalition collapsed.

So we had Gagasan Rakyat in 1990. No coalition in 1995. Barisan Alternatif in 1999. No coalition in 2004.Pakatan Rakyat in 2008 and 2013. And now we are going to have Pakatan Rakyat 2.0 for the next general election.

As Lim Kit Siang said in his Blog posting above, back in June 2000 he had already questioned PAS’s stand on various issues. And soon after that DAP left Barisan Alternatif because PAS did not prove compatible with democracy, pluralism, human rights, cultural diversity, and much more.

Actually, DAP left Barisan Alternatif because in the 1999 general election the Chinese voters ‘punished’ both Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh for entering into a coalition with PAS and the two leaders lost the election. But they could not say that so they used Hudud in Terengganu as the excuse.

But if Hudud really was the issue why in the first place did DAP enter into a coalition with PAS? After all, just six years before that PAS had passed the Hudud Bill in the Kelantan State Assembly. So if Hudud is really the issue then DAP should not even have considered a coalition with PAS in 1999.

DAP knew that it had to distance itself from PAS due to the ‘punishment’ it received from the Chinese voters in the 1999 general election. But even after leaving Barisan Alternatif, DAP did not do much better in the 2004 general election. In 1999, DAP won 10 parliament seats and in 2004 just 12, an improvement of a mere two seats.

The more interesting point to note is that, in June 2000, Lim Kit Siang already realised that PAS is ‘not compatible’ with so many things that DAP holds dear. And he had said so in 2000. And soon after that DAP ‘divorced’ PAS. But then in 2008 DAP again entered into a marriage with PAS.

Why did DAP do that? PAS is still the same PAS. 15 years before that PAS had passed the Sharia Amendment Bill in the Kelantan State Assembly. PAS never withdrew that amendment to the Sharia Bill in 2008 when Pakatan Rakyat was formed. But that was not an issue to DAP then.

Now, that Sharia Amendment Bill that was passed in the Kelantan State Assembly 15 years BEFOREPakatan Rakyat was formed has become an issue. And DAP yet again, for the second time, wants to divorce PAS because of a Bill that was passed 15 years before their marriage.

Do I take it that if Pakatan Rakyat 2.0, with PAS Baru a.k.a. Harapan Baru, were to form the Kelantan and Terengganu state governments in the next general election then they would withdraw the Sharia Amendment Bills in those two states? In other words, is PAS Baru a.k.a. Harapan Baru going to abandon Hudud?

This is a very important point that the voters would certainly like to know. So it is the duty of PAS Barua.k.a. Harapan Baru to tell us that if Pakatan Rakyat 2.0 were to capture Kelantan and Terengganu then Hudud is going to be flushed down the toilet.

The impression being given is that the PAS-DAP marriage is a marriage made in hell. Is the DAP-PAS Baru a.k.a. Harapan Baru marriage going to be a marriage made in heaven? And what if PAS Baru a.k.a.Harapan Baru does not abandon Hudud in Kelantan and Terengganu? Will DAP yet again leave Pakatan Rakyat 2.0 and form a new coalition called Pakatan Rakyat 3.0?