I’ll go if I feel like it, Hadi tells Pakatan

(Malay Mail Online) – Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang today refuted confirmation that he will attend this Sunday’s Pakatan Rakyat presidential council meeting, saying his allies must wait until then to find out if he will put in an appearance.

The PAS president said it was not for anyone to dictate his attendance, in reference to DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng’s demands that the former attend the crucial meeting ahead of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy case decision on February 10.

“He (Lim) has no right to determine if I will attend or not. It is up to me whether I will attend. I am not a schoolboy, we’ll see first,” he said in a report by party organ Harakah Online.

“See on the day of the meeting whether I attend,” he continued.

Hadi also took a further swipe at Lim, who has been critical of the PAS president’s absence from recent PR presidential meetings, saying that he has a better attendance record than the Penang chief minister.

Hadi claimed to have attended all the pact’s meetings when he had been Terengganu mentri besar from 1999 until 2004.

“PR meetings, when I was mentri besar I attended every one. I am not busy like a chief minister, and even when I was, I made sure to attend PR meetings,” he said.

PR came together as an informal pact following Election 2008.

This morning, PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu “confirmed” that Hadi will attend this Sunday’s meeting.

PR presidential council meetings have not been held for more than six months after Hadi stopped attending after the Selangor mentri besar crisis last year that saw the Islamist party attacking the other two allies in public.

The problem was sufficient for DAP’s Central Executive Committee to resolve that the party’s leaders not attend any PR presidential council meeting until Hadi returns to the table.

The acrimony later escalated after PAS announced its plans to enforce hudud in Kelantan despite DAP’s opposition.

In the same vein, PAS has now accused DAP of acting unilaterally in seeking to restore local council elections, in apparent retaliation the latter’s vehement attacks over the Islamist party’s hudud ambition.

The Federal Court will deliver its decision on Anwar’s second sodomy case on February 10.