Abdul Hadi Awang has retained the PAS presidency unchallenged last week. With his continued leadership various interpretations have surfaced, among them, the continued talk of unity between PAS and Umno. The fact that Hadi remains as party president unopposed for another three years show that his leadership has the full support of the party grassroots who know of his inclination towards a PAS-Umno merger.
Can this be regarded as a message that the PAS-Umno merger is approaching reality? The part that I never really understand is what’s with the word ‘merger’? Is Umno suggesting that PAS and Umno should merge as one political party like what Anwar Ibrahim and Syed Husin Ali did in August 3, 2003 when KeADILan merged with Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) to become Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR)? That particular merger was supposed to end the existence of PRM but eventually that didn’t happen. Or is Umno inviting PAS to be one of Barisan Nasional’s (BN) component parties?
Umno claimed the purpose of the merger is for the sake of the Malays and Muslims of this country. By admitting that, Umno is making it sound like they are really desperate in winning the next General Election (GE). I for one agreed that winning the GE won’t be a problem for Umno, the real concern is for Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to perform better than Pak Lah’s dismal performance in 2008 which saw Umno’s popularity at its worst ever. Najib needs to prove to everyone that his ‘Tranformation’ efforts are bearing fruits. The biggest fear for the BN chairman is in the possibility of the ruling coalition party performing even worse than the 2008 ‘tsunami’.
Early indications in the form of the recent Sarawak state election showed everything is going very well so far but still it was BN’s worst performance in the East Malaysian state. Najib knows that he should not take things easy but what could he possibly achieve with the proposed PAS-Umno merger/unity?
On February 8, 2010, Hadi as PAS president announced that the party is ready for talks with Umno on matters in which they could cooperate, including issues involving national security, economy, religion and politics. This though was not a totally original idea for back in '73 - '78 (during Asri Muda's time) PAS was part of BN.
But not everybody in the party seems to share Hadi’s opinion. Early this year Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad has declared PAS will never join Umno in a “unity government”, even if the Islamist party were asked to do so by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong himself. That is a strong statement coming from one of PAS’ most progressive leaders.
Khalid likened cooperating with Umno to working with those who ignore the Islamic practice. He also classified Umno as Muslims who patronizes nightclubs to drink alcohol and he made it clear that PAS would rather work with PKR and DAP in Pakatan Rakyat based on the Islamic principles of justice and truth rather than race alone.
Khalid was actually referring to an event in December 2010 when PAS spiritual leader Nik Aziz Nik Mat met with Umno leaders at Istana Terengganu on Christmas Eve last year at the request of the Agong for “unity talks”. Umno president Najib Razak and deputy president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin were present at the private dinner, together with former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The meeting was seen as another attempt to revive the talks on political cooperation with Umno in the name of Malay-Muslim unity.
The question of political cooperation with Umno became a major campaign issue in the 2009 PAS election after it was revealed that its leaders, including PAS deputy president Nasharuddin Mat Isa and Selangor chief Hasan Ali, met Abdullah and former Selangor mentri besar Dr Mohd Khir Toyo after Election 2008 to explore the possibility of forming a unity government. Leaders aligned to Nik Aziz then accused Nasharuddin of conspiring to take PAS out of Pakatan. Incidentally, PAS vice-president Mahfuz Omar has recently issued a statement reassuring that PAS will never ever collaborate with Umno.
If the main reason for Umno to suggest the ‘unity’ idea is so that they will win big in the next General Election they might want to think again. The proposed merger could possibly divide the Malays even more. Based on the statements given by both Khalid and Mahfuz, it seems that there’s a lot of hatred for Umno among PAS leaders and supporters. Hadi might have retained his presidency but they will be contests for other posts especially the coveted deputy president’s post. Whether Nasharuddin will be able to defend it remains to be seen. There will definitely be some changes in the party’s vice-president posts too. Not only will the results of the coming party election have an impact on PAS and Pakatan, it would also shed some light on whether the proposed PAS-Umno unity will ever see the light of day.
*The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer.
