PAS: No plans to reconcile with Pakatan Harapan

PAS veep concedes split votes led to loss in by-elections but maintains PAS not to blame for demise of former Opposition pact

(FMT) – PAS has no plans to reconcile with Pakatan Harapan for now, says party vice-president Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah.

According to a report in Malay daily Sinar Harian, Amar said PAS was firm about not returning to the Opposition pact.

On the recent Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections, Amar said even though PAS lost in both, the votes they did garner proved the party still had the support of its core supporters.

While conceding that Barisan Nasional triumphed because the Opposition parties were fragmented, he stressed that PAS was not the catalyst of the break up of the former Opposition coalition of Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

He argued that PAS at the time did not want to be separate from other Opposition parties in the country, and so agreed to join PR but that DAP’s vocal opposition to them and their president Abdul Hadi Awang, was among the reasons for the eventual split.

“We in PAS never undermined DAP’s struggles when we were a part of PR. We know DAP is a secular party that disagreed with hudud, but we never went against the party because we know the concept of ‘agree to disagree’,” he said.

Following the end of PR, the DAP, PKR and a PAS splinter party, Amanah, formed Pakatan Harapan.

In the recent by-elections, Amanah and PAS contested separately against the BN, which won both parliamentary seats convincingly.