Jambun: Zakir’s Umno-PAS dream ‘clutching at straws’

Chief of Bopim marvels at how the preacher from India visited only a few places in the peninsula yet concluded that an Umno-PAS coalition government would be the best for Malaysia and Islam.

KOTA KINABALU: A human rights advocate in Borneo has criticised Dr Zakir Naik for “indulging in wishful thinking” after he came to the conclusion that an Umno-PAS coalition government would be the best move for Malaysia and Islam.

“Zakir visited a few places in the peninsula and concluded that an Umno-PAS coalition government would be the best for Malaysia and Islam. He’s indulging in wishful thinking and living on hope.”

“He probably never heard of Sabah and Sarawak or the Orang Asal and thinks that the peninsula is the Federation. If he comes to the two Borneo nations, he would be put on the next plane to India, his original port. He belabours in the delusion that he, and only he, can connect the dots on anything,” Daniel John Jambun said of the preacher from India.

The president of the UK-based Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia (Bopim), hastened to add that he was not for or against the idea that Umno and PAS should team up. “We need not oppose an idea which is a non-starter. Those who cannot remember the past – “in the words of George Santayana” – are condemned to repeat it.”

“No one can keep on doing the same thing which has brought failure in the past and expect a different and better result.”

The Umno-PAS alliance had been tried before in the wake of the searing 13 May 1969 race riots, recalled the Bopim Chief, and never worked out. “PAS itself was an earlier breakaway of ulama from Umno.”

“If the ulama in PAS could not agree with Umno on previous occasions, it’s unlikely that they will agree in the near future. Oil and water cannot mix.”

When former Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi was asked to quit in the wake of the political tsunami that swept the 12th General Election in 2008, pointed out Jambun, no one mentioned the “Malay government”. “Badawi never claimed that his departure from Putrajaya would mean the end of the Malays and Islam and the Malay government in Putrajaya.”

Jambun did not rule out the possibly of Umno and PAS, especially if Najib quit, working together in the next General Election, the 14th, in 2018. “One reason may be due to the fact that Barisan Nasional (BN) component parties in the peninsula, besides Umno, have virtually ceased to exist. MCA itself is down to being a 7/11 party i.e. seven parliamentary seats and 11 state seats.”

“MIC is half that strength in Parliament.”

Even so, Jambun believes that BN component parties in Sabah and Sarawak, especially Umno and PBB, will continue to win a significant number of state and parliamentary seats. “The other BN component parties in Borneo may slowly end up in the same situation as MIC and MCA as they get picked off one by one by the national opposition alliance.”