PKR at loggerheads over Pakatan Harapan
(The Malaysia Insider) – Just two weeks after PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail launched Pakatan Harapan, the party she leads appears divided over the issue, with one faction calling for an emergency meeting to discuss the hasty format of the new opposition pact.
The PKR supreme council (MPP) will meet next Sunday, following a petition to the party president signed by 25 members of the MPP demanding that an urgent meeting be held to discuss the new pact’s “shocking” formation.
The petition, dated September 22, said Pakatan Harapan’s launch went against the decision PKR made in a MPP meeting two days before a meeting between opposition parties and some civil society groups on the opposition’s future.
“We, the undersigned, are shocked and concerned about the action and hasty decision in forming Pakatan Harapan which was announced after the roundtable discussion at Empire Hotel on Wednesday, September 21, 2015 (sic),” said the petition, sighted by The Malaysian Insider. (The meeting was held on Tuesday, September 22.)
“During the meeting of the MPP on Sunday, September 20, 2015, the MPP agreed and supported every effort of the president in continuing negotiations with all quarters towards forming a new pact, including spearheading the roundtable discussion.
“Clearly, MPP asked that no announcement be made during that session, on the contrary it should open the space for more discussions,” the petitioners said.
They said the meeting, which ended with Dr Wan Azizah announcing Pakatan Harapan’s formation, should have merely been a “preliminary discussion”.
PKR will now hold a meeting to trash out the differences next Sunday, according to a letter issued by secretary-general Rafizi Ramli and sighted by The Malaysian Insider.
