KUALA LUMPUR, July 27 — As several top PAS leaders have openly declared their support for Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, PKR should stop trying to oust the Selangor mentri besar, Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia said today.
Drawing similarities to a game of chess, the Malay daily said PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang had “checkmated” PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim when the former voiced his backing of Khalid.
“Awang supports the PAS president, Hadi Awang, who defended Khalid as mentri besar… some of his arguments were that Khalid has never betrayed the people of Selangor, no scandal or breach of trust committed… this is a blow to Anwar,” Awang Selamat wrote in Mingguan Malaysia, the paper’s weekend edition.
Awang, a pseudonym used to represent the collective voice of the paper’s editors, said Anwar insistence on making public his intentions to replace Khalid with his wife and PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Ismail, is a result of the Opposition Leader being consumed by his own greed.
“Awang would like to advise the duo to forget their intention of ousting Khalid… the couple should instead focus their energy on resolving issues haunting their party election,” said the newspaper, referring to the slew of unresolved allegations of rampant fraud in the party’s election, which began in April.
On Friday, Abdul Hadi said that the Islamist party finds that Khalid should remain as the mentri besar of the country most industrialised state, as there are no concrete reasons to replace the latter.
The open dissent is set to pit PAS against its Pakatan Rakyat allies DAP and PKR, who are both reportedly in agreement to remove Khalid, even as ties among the three remain strained by the Islamist party’s ambitions for hudud, the Islamic penal code.
Khalid’s position as mentri besar has remained contentious since his own party initiated the so-called “Kajang Move” to oust him from the position last March.
The move was ostensibly engineered to remove Khalid and to replace him with PKR’s de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who had intended to contest the Kajang state seat which was vacated in February.
But the “Kajang move” fell through after the appellate court overturned his sodomy acquittal and sentenced him to five years in jail, days before the by-election nomination. Anwar has filed for an appeal against this decision.
Although Anwar’s disqualification had then appeared to put to rest plans to remove Khalid, recent controversies involving the Selangor administration have prompted new agitations for his removal.
Among others, these include the still-unresolved row over the seizure of bibles in the state and Khalid’s perceived partiality towards the developers of the proposed Kinrara-Damansara Expressway (Kidex) that is facing mounting resistance from state residents.
“Redeem yourself by following to Hadi’s advice and don't damage Selangor… in fact, use this coming Aidilfitri, and apologise to Khalid for the lapse in attempting to kill his political career at its peak,” added Awang.
