Umno, PAS duel over why Malacca collab talks broke down

 

MALACCA POLLS | Further questions about Umno and PAS’ relationship have been raised as leaders engage in a public tiff over why their plan to collaborate in the Malacca state election fell through.

Earlier this week, PAS vice-president Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar lamented that a certain party chief’s “abang long” (big brother) attitude had derailed talks between Umno, PAS and Bersatu.

Umno supreme council member Ahmad Rahman Dahlan, who says he was part of the talks, has now refuted Samsuri’s version of events.

In a nine-minute video posted on his Facebook page last night, he said it was PAS and Bersatu who had “walked out” of their Oct 27 meeting with Umno.

This was allegedly after Umno rejected certain “criteria” proposed by Bersatu.

“They left, walked out, and left Umno alone in the meeting room,” he said.

This was despite the fact that Umno vice-president and Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob had chaired the meeting.

“I saw this as a lack of respect for the prime minister who was chairing the meeting.

“Those representatives just got up and left the meeting room even though the meeting was not over yet,” he added.

Bersatu’s ‘unacceptable’ criteria

Abdul Rahman revealed that Bersatu had proposed a list of “unacceptable” criteria during the meeting.

One such condition, which he said came from Bersatu deputy president Ahmad Faizal Azumu, was that Umno was not to field a large number of candidates.

This was to prevent Umno from being able to form the state government on its own.

“His (Ahmad Faizal’s) excuse was that Umno may not give executive councillor, local council and village chief positions to Bersatu and PAS,” said Abdul Rahman.

Umno had rejected this proposal as it disagreed with halving Malay-majority seats with Perikatan Nasional.

“Umno did not want to negotiate seats by only taking Malay seats and dividing them in half between BN and PN.

“This was a formula we could not accept. And to me, this formula denies (those) who have the best potential to win these seats,” he said.

Abdul Rahman opined that seats should be divided based on a party’s strength, noting how even PN had used this strength-based strategy among themselves in the Malacca election.

“Bersatu is contesting 15 seats while PAS was only given eight seats. This means Bersatu is contesting twice the number of seats as PAS.

“So even they did not divide the seats equally.

“Why did they impose a condition whereby Umno and PN had to contest about the same number of seats when everyone admits that Umno has far stronger party machinery, members, and branches compared to other parties?” he asked.

Abdul Rahman said Bersatu had also wanted to determine who would be Umno’s chief minister candidate.

Umno, again, could not agree with this condition.

“We come from Umno so let Umno decide who will be the chief minister candidate for the Malacca state election,” he said.

The three Malay-Muslim political parties previously considered joining forces to mount straight fights against Pakatan Harapan in the Malacca election.

Umno had also hoped to collaborate with its muafakat nasional partner PAS.

These plans fizzled and Umno ended up contesting as part of the BN coalition. Bersatu and PAS united under the PN banner. All seats now see three-cornered fights between BN, PN and Harapan.

Malacca goes to the polls tomorrow (Nov 20).  - Mkini