Comrades become foes
Parti Amanah Negara aims to replace PAS in the opposition coalition and lead the charge to take over Johor in the next general election.
Joceline Tan, The Star
MOHAMAD Sabu will be 61 in October. Most men that age would be preparing to ride into the sunset but Mat Sabu, as he is known, is about to relaunch his political career.
On Aug 31, a day after the Bersih demonstration, he announced the formation of Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah). The breakaway members of PAS are now officially the newest political vehicle on the landscape.
The founding members of Amanah used to be stars in PAS but all that is now history. They intend to replace PAS in Pakatan Rakyat.
Amanah aims to be the new Islamist face of Pakatan and their role is to help Pakatan hold on to the Malay seats in the West Coast belt and lead the charge to capture Johor in the next general election.
Mat Sabu’s deputy, the handsome and good-natured Salahuddin Ayub will presumably be their Mentri Besar candidate for Johor.
DAP made tremendous headway in Johor the last general election but they need a Malay party that can bring in the Malay votes.
Mat Sabu has indicated that Amanah will be an Islamist party like PAS. But unlike PAS, it will be inclusive and open its doors to non-Muslims who accept the party’s Islamic precept.
However, Mat Sabu looked rather stressed out during the press conference. He was not his usual bubbly and jokey self. He had had a long weekend at the Bersih 4 protests and had spent the night in a tent pitched in the middle of the road.
His problem was not the hectic weekend but the fact that his group was unable to bring out the Malay crowd. His group had been praying and hoping for a huge Malay presence on the streets but that did not happen, and it has been a big disappointment and loss of face for him and his buddies.
They had made claims of an exodus from PAS and that thousands of members in several divisions in Selangor had resigned from PAS to join them.
For a while, they had the PAS leadership extremely nervous.
But the tables have turned. PAS officials who met Datuk Seri Hadi Awang earlier this week said the PAS president merely smiled when asked what he thought of the thin Malay presence at Bersih 4. There is little doubt that he felt vindicated, and it is evident that without PAS, Pakatan will be like a body with a missing limb.
PAS leaders are now confident that their grassroots support is intact. Party members had not come out after their president indicated that the party supports the objective of free and fair elections but would not participate in the protests.
PAS members are very disciplined. During a previous Bersih rally, several buses carrying PAS members from the East Coast were stopped by police on the Karak Highway. The members were not deterred and walked all the way to the city to join the demonstration, This time around, they stayed home.
“Mat Sabu’s party is an elite group without much grassroots support,” said Harakah columnist Roslan Shahir.
There has been a lot of name-calling and accusations flying back and forth.
Amanah was able to persuade about a dozen MPs and assemblymen from PAS to come along. They make up Amanah’s “bargaining power” in the opposition coalition, especially in Selangor.
But that has also become a flashpoint between the two rival parties.
The PAS rank-and-file have accused the MPs and assemblymen who joined Amanah of “hijacking” the seats they won on a PAS ticket.
The psy-war within PAS is that the breakaway group is a lackey of DAP or “kuda tunggangan DAP”.
PAS leaders are confident that those wakil rakyat who joined Amanah will be wiped out in the Malay heartland states. They are also unimpressed with Amanah’s claims of being an Islamist party namely because there are no top-notch ulama figures in Amanah.
Amanah’s leading ulama is Ustaz Ahmad Awang, a relative lightweight from Perak. The pleasant and humble 80-year-old is Amanah’s penasihat umum or chief advisor. He is remarkably fit for his age or, as some put it, he is healthier than Hadi who is 67.
On the other hand, Amanah leaders say that PAS will be wiped out in the urban West Coast belt and especially in Selangor where Chinese voters call the shots. They say that PAS has lost its way and cannot fit into the multi-racial politics of Malaysia.
Hanipa Maidin, the hot-headed Sepang MP, who is with Amanah, has declared that PAS has no place in any future opposition coalition and he wants PAS to be left in its “solo politics”.
Datuk Wan Rahim Wan Abdullah, who is Amanah’s prime mover in Kelantan, said that PAS is in self-destruction mode.
“It is going back into a dark period of history,” said Wan Rahim who was once the Kelantan Assembly Speaker.
He was referring to the 1986 general election when the party stood in 97 parliamentary seats and won only one seat. The sole winner was Nik Abdullah Arshad whose son Datuk Mohd Amar is now the Deputy Mentri Besar.
Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Yakub stunned everyone when he announced that Kuala Krai MP Dr Hatta Ramli, who has joined Amanah, has to divorce his wife. All PAS wakil rakyat take an oath of allegiance or bai’ah that they will divorce their wife if they leave the party.
It was a warning shot that Dr Hatta’s days in Kuala Krai, Kelantan, are numbered.
Parties like Amanah, said a Penang lawyer, have a role to play in Malaysian politics even if they cannot move the masses.
“But it will be a struggle for the new party to add value to the coalition because their appeal overlaps with that of PKR. They have star power but it’s apparent that they lack mobilising power. They have MPs and assemblymen now but come GE14, a number of them will be gone cases.
“They are aiming big and high but the real test will be in the GE14. They will realise that they have only a niche market and that they will be at the mercy of DAP and PKR,” said the lawyer.
For the more intellectually inclined, the main drawback is that Amanah was formed by a group of leaders who could not accept their defeat in the PAS election.
“They complain that it was wrong of PAS to reject DAP, that PAS has deviated from its objectives. They want to ride on the DAP wave to be in government but are these good enough reasons for voters, especially Malay voters?” said a Terengganu businessman.
Amanah has more or less conceded ground in Kelantan.
“Some of my old friends in PAS are not happy but I told them that Amanah will not attack the state government. We will try to cooperate with PAS in Kelantan because we don’t want to help Umno,” he said.
But Pakatan, with the help of Amanah, will be making a concerted bid for Johor.
DAP has made inroads in Johor and the Chinese tsunami in the state is not over yet. Pakatan leaders hope the Umno dynamics in Johor will worsen and some of them say that the remarks coming from the Johor Palace is going to help them get Malay support in the general election.
They have interpreted the stream of royal opinion on politics as a sign of disenchantment with Umno, and they think that their time in Johor has come.
As for PAS, its concerns are more immediate and realistic. Hadi has been going around the states for dialogues with the party grassroots.
It is also organising a mass gathering of party faithful in October which will be its own show of strength. Size matters in politics, and the party intends to teach the Amanah guys a thing or two about Malay support.
The party is also taking part in the Kongres Rakyat, a big gathering of NGOs and notable individuals in Shah Alam next week to lay out a political initiative for the future.
The Kongres Rakyat is being held on the premise that genuine change cannot come from the streets, it must also come from a consensus of ideas.
