Pakatan: An uneasy alliance that couldn’t last

Jeswan Kaur, The Heat 

The sensational debut by the opposition pact Pakatan Rakyat in April 2008 general election, clinching more than one-third of parliamentary seats and five state governments, offered what many thought was a viable alternative to the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN). Barely seven years down the road, reality sunk in as their uneasy working relationships failed.

It suggested that change was imminent by managing to wrestle the country’s richest state, Selangor, from the long-time rule of the BN government.

Now, Pakatan is dead with its demise confirmed by DAP. Party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said DAP’s central executive committee, its highest decision-making body on June 15 night agreed at a meeting to accept the motion by PAS at its muktamar or annual congress recently to sever ties with DAP.

“Effectively… Pakatan Rakyat ceases to exist,” Lim said in a statement on June 16.

With Pakatan gone, DAP has said it would only work with PKR and “other forces” to end BN’s hold on federal power. Just who are these “other forces” remains to be seen.

For now, a furious DAP wants nothing to do with former ally PAS, the Islamist party that it blamed for the disintegration of Pakatan.

To Lim, as Pakatan was conceived based on consensus among the three parties and was bound by the common policy framework, the PAS’ muktamar motion had effectively killed off the pact.

“The DAP will work with PKR and all other forces who aspire to see the end of Umno-Barisan Nasional’s one-party rule to reshape and realign Malaysian politics with the aim of winning Putrajaya for the people,” he said.

The DAP-PAS fall out has its roots in the Islamist party’s unwillingness to be a team player and its determination in wanting to implement hudud, the Islamic criminal law, in the party ruled in Kelantan.

Failing to knock some sense into PAS  to understand that going against the Pakatan’s common frame work was a liability and detrimental to the pact, DAP decided to sever ties with PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, who refused to budge from his stand of wanting hudud, at all costs, in Kelantan.

Hudud, however, is not the only thorn that pricked DAP. The PAS-DAP hostility was evident during last year’s Selangor menteri besar crisis and Hadi’s about-face and lending support to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

There was more that finally led to DAP announcing the demise of Pakatan. Hadi’s willingness to join hands with Umno in forming a unity government further incensed DAP. That Hadi did not see it fit to discuss with Pakatan partners DAP and PKR about hudud before they were tabled in the state legislature left DAP doubting PAS’ loyalty towards the opposition pact.

Lim rebuked the private motion by Hadi in Parliament to enable hudud’s implementation as an act that “further immobilised” the PR leadership.

As far as DAP is concerned, there is no turning back and neither is the party interested in bygones. Burying Pakatan is a move that only stands to benefit BN, who would continue to lambast the Pakatan allies as failing to embrace unity, which in turn makes Pakatan unfit to administer Malaysia.

While PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who is also opposition leader remained hopeful that all was not lost for Pakatan, the latest stand taken by DAP serves as a let-down.

On June 15, Wan Azizah said there was an urgent need to review the working relationship between PAS, DAP and PKR to save PR from its demise. She called for continuous discussions and solidarity in political cooperation. But DAP refused mediation in the crisis surrounding it and PAS.

Meanwhile, PAS’ new leadership of pro-ulama leaders have said the motion was not binding and still had to be discussed by its shura council of clerics and scholars.

Pakatan’s set-up was flawed from the very start, with two main components of the pact pursuing different goals. While Pakatan apologists would claim that DAP and PAS parted ways because of ideological differences, the realists among them would realise that it was a marriage of convenience that couldn’t last.