As DAP makes history, members worry over ties with PAS

By admin-s Last updated Dec 15, 2014

(MMO) – “In our relationship with PAS, there is this 5% that we disagree with. Yet we keep harping on it even when 95% of the time we are on the same page.”

As DAP takes steps to be more inclusive, by getting more women involved and becoming more Malay-friendly, its grassroots worry that its progress is being hampered not by its enemy Umno, but its ally PAS.

DAP members castigated certain leaders and members in PAS aligned to president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, who are accused of hampering Pakatan Rakyat (PR) unity, at yesterday’s national convention.

The party made history with a new rule that 30% of all elected seats in its central committee, the party’s highest decision-making body, had to go to women.

Yet, even as this happened, more than one grassroots leader took to the rostrum to complain about Hadi and demanded that their senior leaders do something about it.

Making history

The women’s quota makes political and moral sense.

“With this rule, we will tell every woman in the country that if you want to be a politician, then DAP is the party for you,” said Teo Nie Ching, DAP’s assistant publicity secretary and one of three women currently on the CEC.

Party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said women make up a critical voting bloc and almost 70% of new graduates were women.

“Barisan Nasional gets its strength from women and they play a significant role in society. It’s time DAP allows them to play this role in the party,” he said.

The convention also saw the DAP making more efforts to dispel its Chinese-chauvinist image.

Compared with the previous conventions, this one saw about 70% of their speakers using Bahasa Malaysia in their debates. Most of these speakers were non-Malays.

In fact, the speakers who complained about PAS and who attacked Umno did so in Bahasa Malaysia.

Party national organising secretary Anthony Loke said this in his winding-up speech when he said that some veterans had complained they could not understand 90% of the debates.

Only about two of the 20 speakers spoke in Mandarin. Those who did not use Bahasa Malaysia spoke in English.

“We encouraged speakers to debate in the national language because we do not want DAP to be a Chinese-only party.

“We also wanted to prove to Umno that going to vernacular school does not affect your ability to use the national language,” said Loke.

A trishaw, not a bicycle

Yet these strides in inclusiveness were tempered with the frustration that PR’s march was being crippled by Hadi and his faction in PAS.

“Our members are blaming us, saying DAP helped PAS lie to voters,” said Malacca delegate Chin Choong Seong.

The backlash from DAP’s supporters started soon after certain leaders in PAS tried to get a bill passed in the Dewan Rakyat to enforce the Kelantan Shariah Criminal Code.

Then there was the Selangor menteri besar impasse, where Hadi went against the coalition’s move to replace former menteri besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim.

The anger and sense of betrayal among the grassroots, said a DAP CEC member, was because there is still distrust towards PAS and its Islamic state agenda.

In the 1999 elections, many of the DAP’s top leaders were voted out of office – as “punishment” from supporters for working with PAS in a pact then called Barisan Alternatif.

Two years later, DAP left the BA after it could not reconcile its secularist principles with PAS’s Islamic state agenda.

“So when PAS started going back to hudud after the 13th general election, our supporters scolded us,” said the CEC leader who requested anonymity.

The frustration with PAS is particularly sharp because there is a deep realisation within the DAP that its future is tied to a PR that includes PAS.