KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 — The public leadership row within PAS over its role in the opposition alliance is likely to be resolved at an emergency meeting today.
But many analysts and party insiders believe that the root causes of the recurring tensions in the party, which include clashing egos and deep-seated ideological differences, are unlikely to go away anytime soon.
“There is a clear split in the party over how it should move forward. The burning issue is whether the two sides can accommodate each other to make the opposition coalition strong,” said a chief executive of a manufacturing company and financial adviser to several PAS leaders.
The latest spat surfaced late last week when PAS spiritual leader Datuk Seri Nik Aziz Nik Mat made a surprise call for a special meeting of delegates to vote for a change in the party leadership. His call comes barely four months after the party's keenly contested internal elections.
Nik Aziz's chief gripe stems from his belief that several of his colleagues, aligned with party president Datuk Hadi Awang and secretary-general Datuk Mustafa Ali, are holding secret negotiations with the ruling Umno with the aim of breaking away from the opposition alliance to ensure ethnic Malays' political dominance in multiracial Malaysia.
But Hadi said yesterday the party had closed the door to talks to form a unity government with Umno because of a change in the national leadership and that PAS had yet to evaluate the attitude adopted by the current national leader.
“The unity government is no longer viable. We have closed the book on it. The (former) prime minister (Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) has already stepped down,” Bernama reported him as saying.
He said Umno too had stopped raising the issue and the party and Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition were currently tackling the crisis faced by the BN component parties.
Mustafa has come out to publicly declare PAS’s commitment to the Pakatan Rakyat opposition alliance, headed by former deputy premier Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
He expects the party problems to be resolved at today's meeting.
But the show of unity in PAS is only skin-deep, analysts and party insiders insist.
The factors behind the internal rift in senior PAS leadership stem from ideological differences within the party and dissatisfaction over the party's role within the Pakatan Rakyat alliance.
The faction aligned to the party's spiritual leader Nik Aziz, who studied Islam in India and at the renowned Al-Azhar University in Cairo, believes that the implementation of a new Islamic political and moral order in Malaysia can only come about when Muslims and the country's sizeable non-Malay population are ready for it.
But forces aligned to Hadi and Mustafa represent a more nationalistic faction and are strong proponents of Muslim-Malay political hegemony in Malaysia.
Largely buoyed by the religious party's strong gains in last year's general election, this group believes power at the national level is within grasp and they can do it without the backing of Anwar's Malay-dominant but multiracial PKR.
But the party's dismal performance at a recent by-election in a state constituency in Negri Sembilan showed that support for PAS is largely restricted to the northern Malay-belt states of Kelantan and Kedah, where it controls the state assemblies and
to a lesser extent in Hadi's home state of Terengganu, where PAS has a strong presence in the state legislature.
Internal differences aside, several analysts also believe that the faction aligned with Hadi is also unhappy over its role in the opposition Pakatan Rakyat alliance, which is dominated by Anwar's PKR and the Chinese-dominated DAP.
“PAS feels that it is being ignored and fears that its role within the alliance could be further diluted in the next elections. The overtures to Umno open up options for the party and is a message that it should be taken seriously by Anwar,” said one PKR official who is close to PAS leaders. — The Straits Times
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