How the Next Selangor MB Could be from Pas

Pas and UMNO now need each other. It would almost be treason to the Malays if they were to allow DAP to disrespect the Malay rulers again as what they (DAP) had done in Perak.

Megat Ibrahim Bin Megat Abdul Wahab

Pakatan Rakyat is unravelling. DAP wants nothing to do with Pas anymore but they can’t pull out from Pakatan as by doing so, they would be technically leaving Pakatan Rakyat Selangor and that would mean losing all their exco and speaker posts in Selangor.

Instead, they want Pas to leave so that they can remain in the government of Selangor and take most of Pas’ quotas in the exco lineup. It’s not hard to read their game. They can’t say that they are severing ties with Pas as that would mean opting out of the tripartite Pakatan. Instead they’re annoying the heck out of Pas by “severing ties with Abdul Hadi Awang” and calling him a “traitor”, and “dishonest” among others. They’re hoping that this would agitate Pas leaders into severing ties with DAP and eventually leaving Pakatan and the Selangor government.

Pas is now at a crossroads. Their future is clearly not with Pakatan as I’ve mentioned before that aside from forming governments, the Islamist party has nothing in common with secular DAP and PKR. PKR have cleverly issued a statement rejecting Pas’ hudud bill endorsed by an all-Muslim signatory (to avoid being accused of having non-Muslims telling Muslims how to be Muslims) that is laden with Arabic terms such as “fiqh awlawiyyat” and “maslahah ummat” (I wonder if PKR’s Shariah Advisory Council came up with this. Wait. There is no PKR Shariah Advisory Council).

Pas President Abdul Hadi Awang took no time in issuing an open letter saying, “Ada dalam kalangan umat Islam yang memberi alasan bagi menolak usul persendirian berkaitan undang-undang jenayah dengan menggunakan beberapa perkataan yang berkaitan hukum Islam. Antara perkataan-perkataan seperti … fiqh aulawiyyat, maslahah dan lain-lain. Ketika membicarakan tajuk yang berat seperti ini, maka tentunya sangatlah tidak manis sekiranya kita menjadi laksana burung kakaktua yang pandai hanya menyebut kalimah yang diajar tuannya, namun tetap berstatus binatang tanpa akal tanpa memahami hakikat atau tasawwur daripada perkataan yang diucap”.

(There are those among Muslims who offer reasons for rejecting the private member’s bill regarding criminal law by employing a few terms that are tied to Islamic jurisprudence. Among the terms are … fiqh aulawiyyat, maslahah, etc. In discussing such a heavy subject such as this, it is certainly not nice if we were as if a parrot repeating words taught by its master, but is actually no more than a mindless beast without an understanding of the circumstance or tasawwur in the words spoken.)

Abdul Hadi continued on a long academic explanation on hudud in this letter. His tone was of a patient and learned teacher explaining to children who had just been done telling the whole village that this teacher was wrong and that they were right. But one thing we can be certain of is that Abdul Hadi called these people binatang tanpa akal. It sounds harsher in Malay than in English (mindless beast) so I’ll just leave it like that.

This is after DAP and PKR accused Pas of unilaterally pressing ahead with hudud in Kelantan (where DAP have 0 seats and Pas has 32 or 71% of the total seats in DUN), not even two years after PKR unilaterally and without consultation with either Pas or DAP tried to replace DYMM Sultan Selangor’s Menteri Besar with Anwar Ibrahim where Pas holds 15 seats in the state legislative assembly or more than one-third in the government coalition.

Pas’ future is clearly not in Pakatan. Pro-Pakatan members in Pas are already gearing up to convert PasMa into a political entity in preparation of replacing Pas in Pakatan. At this crossroads, Pas will eventually leave their secular partners in Pakatan in favour of hudud. They cannot join Barisan Nasional. The other component parties other than UMNO will simply disagree to it.

What they can and should do is to leave Pakatan and enter into an understanding with UMNO to avoid three-cornered fights – not unlike the understanding they had with PKR and DAP back in the pre-Pakatan days of 2008 which was highly successful for Pas.

The Selangor MB crisis has shown the people that Pas is the only principled and rational party in Pakatan. They were the only ones who thought it unnecessary to replace a clean Tan Sri Khalid (with whom the people were perfectly content) and drag the Elections Commission, the Palace, and the people into a state-wide crisis just to make a certain Anwar Bin Ibrahim the MB of Selangor.

In the eyes of the rakyat, especially Selangor Malays, Pas is the one party whom they can trust to not jeopardise the state’s finances and administration. Pas is not strong enough to win 29 state seats in Selangor. But one thing that is certain is that more Malays in Selangor will rally behind a Pas-UMNO coalition than a DAP-PKR-PasMa alliance.

The Malays have also seen how DAP have blatantly disrespected DYMM Paduka Seri Sultan Perak on the day of the opening of the Perak state legislative assembly by wearing all black (without the songkok though. Although it could have made them “blacker”, maybe they preferred not to be seen as “submitting to Malayness” by donning the songkok in the presence of DYMM Paduka Seri Sultan), disregarding the code for the number one dress when even DYMM Paduka Seri Sultan took the trouble in donning HRH’s very elaborate official attire on HRH’s first time officiating the assembly as the Sultan of Perak. It makes no sense, dragging the issue of Anwar’s incarceration into the Perak state legislative assembly. What has the Perak assembly or DYMM Paduka Seri Sultan got to do with Anwar?

In fact, I would like to see DAP and PKR kicked out of the Selangor government and punished for their insolence towards DYMM Sultan Selangor and DYMM Paduka Seri Sultan Perak so much that I even did the numbers in my own time.

To employ these numbers in the next elections, there are a few guidelines that I would suggest both BN and Pas adhere to.

1. Pas is to go into the next elections without a coalition but with an understanding with BN in avoiding three-cornered fights. As neither BN nor Pas are strong enough on their own to take down DAP and PKR in Selangor, they need this agreement to win more seats for themselves.

2. MCA and MIC should not protest UMNO’s collaboration with Pas as UMNO would be allowing Pas to contest Malay-majority seats that would otherwise be contested by UMNO. MCA should focus on winning at least one Chinese-majority seat instead of bickering with UMNO. Pas would only be contesting 21 seats compared to BN’s 35.

3. Pas and UMNO keep the seats they currently hold and divide among themselves the rest of the Malay-majority seats.

4. Pas’ figure of 21 seats is derived from the number of seats they currently have (15 seats) plus 6 seats. UMNO’s figure of 18 seats is derived from the number of seats they currently have (12 seats) plus 6 seats. Both share the spoils of Pas’ exit from Pakatan equally.

5. Pas is to go into the next elections independently and form a coalition if required with UMNO (at least at Selangor level). They shall be kingmakers – not unlike in the UK and Austria where coalitions are formed after the results of the elections are finalised and based on the number of seats everybody has.

6. This is a no brainer but Pas must not field the Anwarina duo, Saari Sungib and Hasnul Baharuddin.

Lim Kit Siang is so sure that Pas will be decimated if they were to go on without DAP and the non-Muslim votes. He has forgotten the fact that Pas has so much more in common with UMNO than they do with DAP or PKR.

A Pas-UMNO alliance would be invincible but it would not be healthy for interracial relations within BN which is why Pas should not join BN but only form coalitions wherever necessary. Let us not forget that interracial relations are alive and kicking in the anti-hudud camp of DAP and PKR.

The people will still remember how PKR and DAP almost paralysed Selangor and how they didn’t care if it fell just because they wanted to make a certain Anwar Bin Ibrahim the Menteri Besar during only their sixth year in power. They will also still remember how it was Pas who did not only stand up for Tan Sri Khalid, but even kept the state administration going when PKR and DAP couldn’t care less if nobody was running the state as long as they won against DYMM Sultan Selangor.

If Pas and UMNO were to win 80% of the Malay-majority seats that they were to share among themselves, they might find themselves with 31 seats between them – enough to form the next Selangor government – with the consent of DYMM Sultan Selangor of course.

It might even scare the Chinese into voting MCA again in order to avoid a fully Islamist or Muslim Selangor government. If this happens, racial balance in the government could be restored.

If Pas were to emerge from the next elections with more seats than UMNO, they could even be in the position to demand the Menteri Besar post.

Let it be stressed that if ever this collaboration is extended to the federal level, Pas should not demand the post of Deputy Prime Minister. UMNO could however, offer the DPM post to any of the Sabah and Sarawak component parties for the sake of national unity and as compensation to the eastern Malaysia parties for UMNO not being able to win all the Malay votes by themselves and having to rope Pas in to bring in the Malay votes. Being the Menteri Besar of the richest state in Malaysia should be enough for Pas.

This is the only way for Pas to advance from the sinkhole they’re trapped in. It might also be the only way for UMNO to remain relevant to the Malays and Malaysia and possibly hold on to the federal government. Pas and UMNO now need each other. It would almost be treason to the Malays if they were to allow DAP to disrespect the Malay rulers again as what they (DAP) had done in Perak.

Pas could go from having formed the government in Kelantan to forming the government in the richest state in Malaysia. UMNO might even offer one cabinet post to them. It is a lot better than nothing and it would certainly put Pas in a better position to educate the people on Islam like what they have been doing in the past decades.

One would be a fool to not notice that Muslims are now more receptive towards hudud than they were during Mahathir’s era. This is a result of Pas’ strategy in education. It takes time but it works.

The era of Mahathir’s dominance over the country and opposition towards hudud is now over. UMNO is now not as strong it used to be. They have to make concessions. It is now the time for Pas to make use of this circumstance by making amends with the largest Malay party in Malaysia. For Pas and UMNO, it is now make or break.