Umno Does Not Understand Us PAS People

 

Yes, there are more things to life than power and position. I can’t take any of that to my grave. Everything I own will be left to those I leave behind. And what I want to leave behind to those who will mourn my death is people saying that Anak Bugis Raja Petra Bin Raja Kamarudin remained loyal to PAS till the day he went to his grave and he did not betray PAS for worldly gains.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I first met PAS President Tok Guru Abdul Hadi Awang in 1977 in his house in Kampung Rusila, Terengganu.

In 1979, I brought a few members of the royal family to perform their Friday prayers at Masjid Rusila. They were quite fascinated with Tok Guru, who they had never met before.

In 1982, I spent three weeks in Mekah and Medina with Tok Guru and a number of other PAS leaders. That was the first time I met the PAS President, Ustaz Fadzil Muhammad Noor. After that we became very close, and when he went to Terengganu, he would look me up, and I would go to Kedah to spend the day with him.

It was also around that time when we arranged for Tok Guru Hadi to deliver monthly sermons at the Masjid Al-Mujahideen, Damansara Utama in Petaling Jaya. The objective was to introduce Hadi and PAS to the urban Malays and transform PAS from a kampung party in the Malay heartland to a national party.

That was about 40 years ago and since then PAS has transformed from a village party into a national party of some clout. I am sure 40 years ago many of you were not born yet or belum sunat lagi.

When I was detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) in 2001, Ustaz Fadzil launched the Anti-ISA Movement.

The story of my association with PAS and its leaders is a much longer story than this and runs into many pages to include how we bought the land in Rusila to expand Masjid Rusila, developed the English section of Harakah, and so on. But allow me to end the story here.

The bottom line is, I was there at the “birth” of PAS since 1986 when it won just ONE parliament seat in the 7th general election and garnered just 700,000 of the popular votes. PAS practically “died” in 1986 and then bounced back to life and today is a national party.

Now there is a move to badmouth Hadi and undermine PAS. And people like us are being asked to choose where our loyalties lie. Five million PAS Malays, half of them registered voters, are being put in a dilemma. We want PAS and will support Umno and whoever else works with PAS, PPBM included.

But if we are asked to choose sides, then we will have no choice but to do so. And the side we choose will be the side PAS wants us to choose. So do not put us in that situation because power and position are not important to us.

We have been the opposition for 70 years so what’s another 10 or 20 years? I am now 70 years old. How many more years have I got? Five years? Ten years? I might even be dead before Christmas this year. So what’s power and position to someone like me who is about to die?

Yes, there are more things to life than power and position. I can’t take any of that to my grave. Everything I own will be left to those I leave behind. And what I want to leave behind to those who will mourn my death is people saying that Anak Bugis Raja Petra Bin Raja Kamarudin remained loyal to PAS till the day he went to his grave and he did not betray PAS for worldly gains.