How to make PAS moderate again

Deal it a crushing defeat at the polls, says Khalid Samad.

(FMT) – PAS will return to moderate politics only if it loses badly in a general election, according to Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad.

His belief is based on PAS’ response to the devastating defeats it suffered in the 1986 and 2004 general elections. Those defeats came after it embraced hardline Islamism. The party pursued a moderate course in the aftermath of the losses, Khalid noted.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “PAS has a very short memory and now thinks it is where it is because of its strength and the people’s support for its Islamic agenda.

“I believe it is also being fed misinformation by Umno which says PAS is very strong and so on. Because of that, Umno has got PAS to become more conservative and Umno is getting some political benefit from that.”

Khalid said he did not see PAS becoming a more open and more progressive party unless it suffered another devastating defeat at the polls.

“It has to lose and lose very badly before this can happen, and with that path Abdul Hadi Awang is taking the party down, I think PAS will likely lose everything.”

In 1982, the ulama who took over PAS had been inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution that led to the establishment of an Islamic state. As a result, the politicking between PAS and Umno became increasingly religious in nature as they vied for the Muslim vote.

Barisan Nasional attempted to counter PAS’ appeal by creating a number of state-run Islamic institutions, including the International Islamic University of Malaysia. PAS leaders, however, scoffed at such initiatives as being “superficial” and “hypocritical”.

The Malay community became increasingly divided in their support for the two parties. At times, this division boiled over into violence, as in the case of the 1985 Memali incident. Four policemen and 14 civilians were killed when a raid turned into a bloodbath in the remote village in the district of Baling, Kedah.

Two hundred policemen had laid siege on the village, where PAS ulama Ibrahim Mahmud, also known as Ibrahim Libya, led an Islamic movement.

A general election was held in the following year, and PAS recorded its worst ever performance. It managed to retain only one seat in Parliament.

In recovering from the defeat, PAS chose to retreat from its hardline Islamism and pursue a more moderate course. This was manifested, for example, in its cooperation with Semangat 46, an Umno splinter. Its success in taking over the Kelantan government in 1990 has been attributed to this cooperation.

PAS’s return to moderate politics had in fact been signalled a year earlier, with the election of Fadzil Noor as its president. While he did not abandon PAS’s ideological commitment towards establishing an Islamic state, he did moderate the party’s rhetoric. He brought young urban professionals into the party leadership, which was previously made up mainly of conservative ulama.

Period of division

Fadzil died in 2002 and was replaced by the conservative Abdul Hadi Awang. This coincided with a period of division between the ulama and the party’s younger leaders, who wanted to make PAS’ Islamist ideology more appealing to mainstream Malaysians.

The party was unable to reconcile the views of the two factions with a coherent definition of an Islamic state.

Nevertheless, the emergence of the Reformasi movement in 1998 saw PAS aligning itself with various secular organisations, including political parties. It recorded its best ever electoral performance in the general election held in the following year. Many have attributed the success to PAS’s decision to join an informal opposition pact called Barisan Alternatif.

However, the pact proved to be unstable, mainly because of quarrels between PAS and DAP on the issue of PAS’s Islamic state agenda. On September 21, 2001, DAP quit Barisan Alternatif.

At the same time, PAS found itself losing Malay support following Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s assumption of office as prime minister. Abdullah, a likeable figure, had Islamic credentials. At the same time, the 911 terrorist attacks in the United States had raised fears of radical Islam all over the world.

The 2004 polls represented one of PAS’ lowest points in election history. In an expanded Parliament, its representation was reduced to seven seats.

PAS’ response to the defeat, like its response to the 1986 wipeout, was to abandon its hardline image.

Khalid said PAS was likely to keep on alternating between being hardline and moderate unless it suffered an absolutely crushing defeat, including the loss of the state of Kelantan.

“Perhaps that is the only way the PAS leaders will learn their lesson. Otherwise, they will repeat this cycle of becoming arrogant when they do well and heading towards more conservative thinking, and then losing and having that loss become a wake-up call.

“It’s unfortunate that PAS doesn’t learn the real lesson.”

Expanding on the subject of PAS’s alleged arrogance, Khalid said, “PAS believes that its performances in 2008 and 2013 were due to its own strengths and machinery, and that it had helped everyone else win.

“It fails to see the contribution of the other opposition parties and the benefit of being aligned to them.

“PAS leaders think that the opposition coalition only profited PKR and DAP, that PAS was made use of, that PAS members campaigned for the other parties, that it was unfair that the other parties achieved better results.”

PAS has so far refused to be wooed back into the Pakatan alliance, which now includes Parti Pribumi Bumiputera Malaysia.

It is also considering ending the political cooperation it has with PKR.