PETALING JAYA: Muafakat Nasional (MN) is not dead and buried, and there is no tombstone with the pact’s name on it, a PAS leader said today.
Speaking at a Perikatan Nasional (PN) ceramah in Muar last night, PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man insisted that the party’s focus was now solely on the Johor elections, and not on MN, its pact with Umno.
“There are no graves, no tombstones, and no one has declared that Muafakat Nasional has ended,” he was quoted by Bernama as saying. “Although it may not appear to be alive, it’s not dead either.”
Tuan Ibrahim said the status of MN would be re-evaluated after the Johor elections on March 12.
“Right now, we’re not focusing on MN. We’ve temporarily put it on hold as we concentrate on the Johor elections.
“We also cannot look back and will continue to look ahead towards GE15 and strengthening PN,” he said.
Tuan Ibrahim, who is the environment and water minister, also said that Umno and PAS still enjoyed a good relationship despite the two parties going head to head in several seats in Johor.
Umno and PAS, the two largest Malay-based parties, formed MN in September 2019 as an electoral pact aimed at uniting the Malay-Muslim vote.
However, ties between the two parties have grown increasingly strained after PAS joined Bersatu to form PN when Muhyiddin Yassin was the prime minister.
A high-ranking Umno leader told FMT last month that MN was now “merely a marriage of convenience”. In November, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang had rejected the pact and described it as akin to being “shackled”. - FMT
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