PETALING JAYA: An academic has advised opposition supporters against reading too much into the absence of PKR leaders at Muda’s launch last week.
Asked if it meant that PKR could one day withdraw from Pakatan Harapan, Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid of Universiti Sains Malaysia said such an assumption would be premature.
“PKR is like the engine of PH. Without PKR, PH’s claim to being a broad-based national coalition loses justification,” he told FMT.
Muda’s official unveiling in Kuala Lumpur was attended by top leaders from DAP, Amanah and Warisan and even representatives from the yet-to-be registered Parti Aspirasi Sains Malaysia.
DAP and Amanah have made way for Muda in six contests at next month’s Johor polls, but negotiations between Muda and PKR have not yielded any result yet.
Fauzi said the absence of PKR at such events might be strategic. Its leaders might not want to be seen as being “too close to DAP” so as to minimise the loss of Malay votes at the March 12 polls, he said.
At the press conference after the launch, Muda president Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman said invitations were sent to both PKR and Pejuang but “they both could not send any representatives”.
However, the Muar MP referred to PKR leaders as “our friends who are not here”.
Asked to comment on the absence of a PKR representative, PKR communications director Fahmi Fadzil told FMT that Muda did send an invitation to PKR president Anwar Ibrahim “but he was unable to attend”.
Fahmi speculated that there might not have been any follow-up between the offices of PKR and Muda regarding the matter.
Oh Ei Sun of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs said Fahmi’s explanation might “very well have been the case”, but he also said “there is no love gained or lost between PKR and Muda”.
He said they were likely to contest against one another for some seats “as they go after similar cohorts of voters”. - FMT
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