Selangor Crisis: Hadi plays it like a Boss

He no longer worries about disgruntled Ulama factions leaving the party. Put simply, should PAS lose any of its members, they would be Anwar loyalists.

Raggie Jessy

Just yesterday, Hadi was plain ol’ Hadi.

Today, he’s metamorphosed into a thorn up Anwar’s sorry ass, the one many take the mickey out of in cyber spheres. Hadi’s newfound dexterity helped shed light on Selangor’s whodunit, earning him ascendency to a throne Anwar stealthily erected in Selangor. That’s right; Hadi is so suddenly the kingmaker.

Dissidents were dumbstruck when Hadi jawed them down last Saturday. He said it as it is, telling the Spade apart from the Jack in a manner that curdled Anwar’s pot of milk. Kajang 2014 is no longer the splat of applesauce Anwar dished out to you, the reader, since Lee Chin Cheh cried wolf.

I’ve been saying it all along; Anwar pushed buttons before seeking concessions from Pakatan’s leadership coterie. He sent Hadi round the bend, while Kit Siang was open mouthed as he got dragged through the mud from Gelang Patah. PAS, on the other hand, made u-turn after u-turn almost immediately as the manoeuvre became a public concern, while Guan Eng was caught fumbling amidst reporters, whistling in the dark.

But above all, Anwar had overrated his legion. It’s that plain and that simple. PKR, with everything Anwar written to it, is now headed for a collision course with his ego. A bandwagon of rebels without a legitimate cause, Pakatan Rakyat is ripping apart at its seams, with the likes of Hadi and Khalid showing Anwar just what it means to play it like a boss.

As usual, let us ask ourselves some simple questions, with the hope of putting a fresh perspective to what might already be obvious; Pakatan’s political demise.

1. Has PAS lost its appeal?

It most certainly has, though Hadi may just have negotiated some composure within Malay majority realms.

There was a time, when many (me included) prophesied of a Khalid-led party, one that would emerge a third force in Selangor’s political quotient. But that is far from Khalid’s design, though such are prospects, that on the eighth day, Khalid could swoop in and turn the lights out on everyone. Nothing seems fathomable these days. Politics is such that the next 24 minutes, let alone hours, could spell the difference between Anwar’s Kajang and Nizar’s Perak.

Kajang was the overture to Anwar’s grand banquet, where he hoped to feast on Selangor’s burgeoned coffers, the one Khalid prudently brimmed over with enough bucks to satiate Anwar’s illimitable desires. Selangor’s RM3 billion may just be incentive enough for Anwar to risk his flagging repute by throwing down the gauntlet to the ruler. Well, that’s my take on it, though it qualifies only as an educated guess.

Be that as it may, component party idiosyncrasies have surfaced in a manner that has damaged the coalition irrevocably. PKR is divided to the core, while PAS may just have a third of its members rallying against Hadi and his Ulama loyalists. But disgruntled PKR members, however many, weren’t man enough to stand up for Khalid, for fear of being dedicated to Anwar’s shitlist. Now, neither is anyone willing to settle for Wan Azizah, or UMNO, for that matter.

Thus, if Khalid had served them a platform to springboard their political careers from while pointing canons at Anwar, both PKR and PAS would probably have lost a significant lot of its members. The infamous 30 assemblymen could then have turned their backs to Wan Azizah from ‘parti Khalid’, while delivering her and her endeared hubby the third finger.

That’s right; many hoped that Khalid would rise to the occasion by establishing himself with a new party. Instead, Anwar and his henchmen may have struck up a bargain to counter the prospect, with PasMa being the antithesis of parti-Khalid. You see, Anwar is the kind of guy who takes no chances when odds are stacked against him. A scheming Machiavellian, he rises to every occasion while leveraging on calamities, reversing odds to favour his illicit intrigues.

Now that Hadi has come forth quite the righteous guru, he has Anwar antagonists strapped firmly in his saddle. That is to say, he no longer worries about disgruntled Ulama factions leaving the party. Put simply, should PAS lose any of its members, they would be Anwar loyalists. It seems that Hadi scrutinized risks before deciding to appear equitable last Saturday.

Meanwhile, a vast majority of Malays turned their backs on PKR the day Anwar bulldozed into Khalid’s turf. A significant faction to the Chinese electorate is believed to have followed suit, while those who remain jostled up in PKR and DAP camps comprise of die hard loyalists, who have been rallying against UMNO and the Social Contract from day one. When the likes of Mat Sabu sang praises of Azizah alongside Kit Siang and Anwar, many Malays may have given Hadi the slip as well. That is that then, for Pakatan Chinese and Malays.

Withal, staging an ‘Azizah’ could have delivered to PAS Chinese votes from within Pakatan conformist camps at one point. But such are circumstances today, that even Chinese from within the crumbling coalition would think twice before delivering PAS the thumbs up. This is quite a fathomable assumption; many vigilantes have emerged in recent days, candid with expressions that has rendered PAS a flip-flop. The comedy of errors sent signals of despair to an ever apprehensive Chinese electorate, now well beyond Hadi’s turf.

Thus, with odds recalibrated, Hadi may be soliciting for votes from the Malay electorate instead. They may be all he has left, in a rabbit hole that keeps getting deeper and deeper by the minute. You see, there may only be ashes left in the vault for Pakatan Rakyat come GE14. By regaining his composure within Malay enclaves, Hadi may just yet be salvaging his reputation among an electorate that has traditionally served as PAS’s lifeline.

2. How will Anwar brand PasMa?

PasMa apparently stands for ‘Parti Umrah Sejahtera Malaysia’, while PAS stands for ‘Parti Islam Se-Malaysia’. Thus, PasMa isn’t ‘PAS Baru’, nor is it an Anwar inspired product. No. There’s a sordid stench to it, which brings one name to my mind; Lim Kit Siang.

Along the years, DAP and PAS have taken digs at each other over the latter’s Islamic State ambitions and Hudud. The late Karpal Singh was known to have said that an Islamic state could only be realised ‘over his dead body’, which led the former DAP National Chairperson straight into a cauldron of dissension that brewed in UMNO’s camp.

Kit Siang was incessant with scathing remarks against Hudud, even when he claimed to be a knight of a colour. Prior to GE13, Kit Siang and Karpal unleashed a hail of barbs that severely debilitated PAS in the eyes of a Chinese people, who stood hesitant with their ballots in PAS designated constituencies. Arguably, Kit Siang had rendered PAS the underdog, which may have accounted for its relatively dismal performance.

Ironically, the word ‘Islam’ does not appear in PasMa, though the party is inherently Islamist in nature. Suffice to say, Kit Siang and Anwar will dispense with intricacies pertaining to Hudud, which stands as the only snag that makes Pakatan Rakyat a cockamamie excuse for a coalition.

In my heart of hearts, I envisage PasMa to represent ‘Islam of Moderation’, a theological dogma Anwar has pretentiously garbed himself with over the years. You see, PAS is likely to make an exit, coughing up space for Anwar to reprise his role as a moderate reformist, seeking to imbue Malaysia’s multi-ethnic lineament with policies every citizen could hold in esteem, and the rest of the Irish bull that goes along with it.

From this angle alone, PasMa is yet another platform for Anwar to springboard his political ambitions from, in a manner reminiscent of his UMNO trotting days. Back then, Anwar enticed Mahathir by parading as an Islamic liberalist. Perchance, he was just who UMNO needed to offset advances by PAS, which had paved inroads into UMNO territory on Islamic pretexts, at a time when many viewed Mahathirism as un-Islamic.

Well, he had Mahathir wrapped around his little finger for a time, didn’t he? So what more can I say?

3. Will PasMa bode well for Pakatan Rakyat?

Perhaps it will. Perhaps it won’t. I couldn’t possibly know for sure.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; one can and must never undermine the political will of die hard loyalists, who would vouch for even a nail on the wall, so long as it bears a Pakatan tag alongside.

It is left to be seen just how pissed Selangorians are with Anwar. The power tussle may wind up with state-wide elections, one way or the other, should an MB be selected from among PAS assemblymen. Until and unless we have some poll or other, it remains difficult to muddle through intricacies in a manner that is tenable.

All said, PasMa could subdue temperatures within Chinese camps, sore with Anwar for ruffling Khalid’s feathers. Prospects of a coalition dominated by Malay moderates and a country rid of the Social Contract may be incentive enough to wallop the electorate back into conformity, at Khalid’s expense.