Is TG Hadi Awang such a superb tactician or is he just a plain silly and suicidal bumpkin?

Umar Mukhtar

Consider this! In almost all straight fights between PAS and the Barisan Nasional, the winning margins in past elections when PAS won rarely exceeded 15% of the votes cast. Does PAS expect to win in three-cornered fights in PRU14 when the third party spoiler is its splinter party, PAN, who will definitely steal at least 10% of PAS’s votes?

PAN, like kids in the schoolyard, has already indicated that as a PAS splinter party it is compelled to stand wherever PAS stands. PAN considers winning is secondary but wants to hold itself out as a worthy Islamist component to be reckoned with to its coalition partners, Pakatan Harapan.

It will cost money but that would be to the kiasu DAP’s account. DAP is determined to teach PAS a lesson for not kowtowing to it. PAS also can never hope for Chinese votes like when it was in PR, not that it matters much in the Malay heartland, PAS’s powerbase.

Assuming the above challenges, technically PAS could even lose almost all its seats in favour of UMNO, the beneficiary of three-cornered Malay fights. That doesn’t seem to worry TGHA at all. There must be something up his sleeves.

Is he hoping that in return for his lame defence of Prime Minister Najib Razak in the 1MDB scandal, which he can barely understand, and his words (in Islam, you need four witnesses to confirm the act of stealing!), which have no effect on other people anyway, BN in PRU14 will forego running in the state constituencies or parliamentary constituencies which PAS presently holds, in favour of PAS?

Are you kidding?

Nazri Aziz will jump out of his skin. Not to mention Mustapa Mohd and other Kelantan MB wannabes. Why would BN want to do that? BN doesn’t need PAS that bad as can be seen in the results of the Sg. Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections.

PAS would need to be a component party of the BN coalition for that to ever happen! And for that, Najib needs to step over the corpse of its non-Muslim component parties, especially those from Sabah and Sarawak.

So what are TGHA and PAS Murshidul Am Harun Din up to? Going it alone after stepping on people’s toes in the present circumstances is suicidal. It will only benefit BN. The loser will be the opposition of course, but for PAS it may be fatal.

Isn’t that a high price to pay for Najib allowing the RUU Syariah amendment to see the light of day? Let’s see in a few months’ time when it is actually tabled. Will it be the same Najib’s ass Hadi and Harun Din will be kissing?

On the other hand, BN needs its Sarawak and Sabah component parties much more than they need PAS in order to maintain its present federal majority. PAS can only offer around twenty MPs max compared to Sarawak’s and Sabah’s more than forty MPs.

Or is Hadi hoping that with his expectant success of the amendments, Muslims in droves will support PAS? Will UMNO allow that success? Will Malaysian Muslims be jumping for joy for this precursor and waiting impatiently to be subjected to Islamic Law in full?

Or will UMNO be so thrilled by this that it will abandon its non-Muslim partners and join with PAS to form a huge Muslim party? Maybe I have not been such a staunch Muslim to foresee that but I still trust my judgement that these will not be likely.

If the above is unlikely, really, what are Hadi and Harun Din up to?

Is nationalism creeping back into PAS towards Malay-Muslim solidarity? Religion is just a convenient facade; maybe it’s the racial shit ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ they are really after. After all being anti-Malay is now synonymous with being anti-Islam. Even though it may be Malay corruption that you are bitching about, the corruption doesn’t really seem to bother them but it’s the Malay thingy that they are touchy about.

Or maybe Hadi does intend for PAS to return and be a true opposition party, and this dose of ‘missing-PAS-badly’ medicine is just to extract more concessions from DAP which was getting too big for its boots. After all PAS’s absence does hurt the opposition.

But that is on the assumption that DAP is really interested in Putrajaya. But maybe ripping off Penang is just good enough for its Secretary-General?

Let’s watch how long this coyness between Hadi, Harun Din and Najib will last. Already the party’s No. 2 is showing some restlessness by speaking out publicly out of tandem.

A change of party president may be forthcoming unless the good stuff is spread around more freely and generously by Najib. By good stuff, I mean that sense of solidarity. Heheh! Wink! Wink!