Hadi treading a tenuously fine line amid S'wak Report allegation

Under pressure from the latest disclosures from Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang has issued a statement that attempts to pluck the flower of safety from the nettle of danger.

The disclosures – in a statement by Rewcastle-Brown defending herself in a defamation suit brought by Hadi in relation to alleged wealth accumulation by his cronies in PAS – have placed the party and its supremo in a tenuous light.

In a statement last Friday that veered from disdain towards detractors to imperious certainty that the PAS way is the way, Hadi rebuked Pakatan Harapan chair Dr Mahathir Mohamad (photo) – without naming him – for masquerading as a reformer.

Also, he defended the PAS position of aversion for Harapan and wary cooperation with Umno.

Hadi said PAS declined to dangle any hope of collaboration with the “coalition of hope,” which he disdained as one trying to be both prosecutor of wrongdoers and counsel to the wronged, arguing that this double act won’t wash because of the inherent duplicity.

His explanation: “In its (Harapan’s) folds are plunderers who from long ago conspired to cause a cycle of problems as continuous as the beads on a string for counting prayer chants.”

No prizes for guessing who the PAS supremo is fingering here.

Hadi asserted that according to Islamic criteria, tainted leaders cannot be relied on to rectify wrongs.

He claimed that ordinary citizens find themselves faced with a crisis of confidence, unable to decide whom to fault and whom to punish, and added that that the malaise besetting the nation is the noxious legacy of past and present leaders of Umno.

Hadi also argued that the national affliction was much advanced, and the erosion of confidence deep enough as to leave the public forlorn.

“But as there is no illness without a cure, the search must persist so long as there is breath in the body,” he counselled.

The PAS leader described favourably the attitude of Umno’s Tambun MP Husni Hanadzlah (photo) – who he said chose to resign from the cabinet but steered clear of Harapan's enticements – calling it a mannered pursuit of righting wrongs.

Hadi said Husni’s critic-cum-adviser stance within his party was akin to PAS' stance of being an unaligned opposition party intent on dispensing advice to all and sundry.

He gave thanks that thus far, no one from PAS has been questioned for corruption by MACC, and maintained that the PAS stance of tempered criticism of all was more in keeping with the etiquette necessary for the functioning of democracy.

He justified the PAS position of apparent neutrality between two competing blocs (Umno and Harapan), saying that it is premised on empyrean Islamic vision, rather than ideological nostrums of mere mortals.

In delineating the PAS stance, Hadi ignored the need to explain how it comports with the declaration of Banggol Peradong – the place in Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, where in April 1981, the then PAS veep delivered the “Amanat Hadi.”

This is the edict issued by Hadi, an Islamic scholar, rendering Umno as anathema to Muslims.

These days, this declaration is increasingly faulted as the origin of the growth of ritual separatism between PAS and Umno followers in the conduct of Islamic rites concerning prayers, marriages and burials.

It spawned in its wake separate mosques for Umno and PAS Muslims, separate imams to lead prayers, separate solemnisation of marriages, and separate burial grounds.

It is a radical leap for Hadi, from being the avatar of intra-religious separatism to an avuncular critic of Umno.

Virtuoso transformations, such as Mahathir's turn from authoritarian prime minister to reformist oppositionist, is nothing new these days.

But Hadi's transition – if the stories about PAS of being gifted a RM90 million donation from Umno, the subject of the suit against Rewcastle-Brown turn out to be true – would be a change as vilely duplicitous as the one he ascribes to Harapan's chair.

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.- Mkini