PAS Youth’s muktamar drumbeat: real or cosmetic unity?

 The multicultural drum performance was a hollow gesture, seen by many as a band-aid over deep wounds inflicted by the party’s leaders.

PAS Youth’s annual muktamar opened two weeks ago with a multicultural drum performance – a rare sight at the Islamic party’s annual assembly. The performance combined traditional drums from Malay, Chinese, Indian and Thai cultures.

This was very different from previous assemblies, particularly given PAS’s identity as a Malay-Muslim party. Obviously, Malaysians generally viewed it as another attempt at boosting PAS’s image among non-Muslim communities as the next general election approaches.

The Islamic party has often turned to symbolic gestures such as this. Here, they invited everyone to feel the rhythm of shared unity. Honestly, it was a beautiful image with hands of different colours striking the same skin of a drum, bodies swaying in sync, a moment of transcendent harmony.

On the surface, it seemed like the perfect antidote to a worsening division in the country, brought about mainly by the pronouncements of its top leaders on how non-Muslims must play a secondary role in the governance of Malaysia.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth we rarely admit. The drumbeat is not a bridge but often a band-aid. It offers a feeling of unity that ends the moment the performance stops.

The performance may have made the youth wing feel it had done something significant about racism when, in reality, the togetherness lasted only for an hour. The next day, everyone returned to the same segregated schools and unequal opportunities, with politicians once again harping on race and religion. Racial unity needs structural intervention, not a sonic spectacle.

If PAS is serious about racial unity – seemingly the party’s lowest priority – it must stop treating it as a performance and start treating it as a structural commitment.

Unity is not something you feel in your chest during a drum performance, but something you build in your community through policy, accountability and willingness to sit in discomfort, not dance in rhythm.

The question centres on whether the party’s use of multi-ethnic cultural elements in its opening ceremonies is merely cosmetic, given deeper concerns about minority rights in its policy platform.

The underlying sentiment reflected in social media by critics reveals a deep-seated distrust among minority communities for the Islamic party, rooted in historical and ongoing political wounds. Most non-Malays viewed this as scratching the surface while the wounds are already deep – a broader crisis of trust in Malaysian politics.

This distrust is not new, as it is rooted in decades of ethnically charged politics made worse by PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang’s constant push for Malay-Muslim supremacy.

To make it worse, PAS’s so-called multiracial political friends like Barisan Nasional and Wawasan have remained silent over the near-seditious pronouncements of Hadi. Even Rafizi Ramli’s Bersama, which has openly promised to push for more equality, has chosen to remain silent as it obviously does not want to lose any Malay support before even taking off politically.

Say it in the manifesto

The real challenge for PAS or any other political party is to move beyond cosmetic gestures and come out openly with substantive policy assurances that protect the rights of all citizens.

Here, manifestos play an important role. They serve as crucial documents published by parties before general elections, setting out the policies they would deliver if elected.

They convey a party’s wider narrative and the background to its policy choices. While governments have no statutory obligation to fulfil manifesto commitments – as we have seen in all general elections – there are strong political reasons to adhere to them, as they bring credibility and demonstrate understanding of societal challenges.

So, can PAS declare in its manifesto that its ultimate aim is to make Malaysia an Islamic state when it comes to power or leads a ruling coalition at the federal level?

Will it openly declare that it will ban all forms of gambling? With its delegates calling for a PAS minister to oversee Kuala Lumpur if it comes to power, will the party also declare that it will give the capital’s landscape a more Islamic outlook? Or like what its supreme leader Hadi has been constantly preaching, will non-Malay ministers be barred from heading key policymaking portfolios? And how will it tackle the problem of unlicensed places of worship if and when it comes to power?

If the party wins power after putting these down in writing in its manifesto, it can be viewed as what the majority of Malaysians want. No individual or party should protest if this happens, as the voters would be choosing with their eyes open. As they say, the people deserve the government they choose.

In modern democracies, the extent to which pre-election policy promises translate into actual policymaking is a key factor in political legitimisation. We are seeing how Pakatan Harapan is struggling after failing in this aspect. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.