KUALA LUMPUR, May 18 — Tired of being labelled powerless, the PAS Supporters’ Congress (DHPP) will demand rights to vote in the upcoming party election and to nominate the wing’s chosen leaders for the Islamist party’s coveted central committee posts.
While admitting that DHPP was currently unable to influence PAS’s policies much, the wing’s chairman, N. Balasubramaniam, expressed hope that this will change if they are allowed to take part in the PAS election next month.
“(For now) we cannot do anything, we cannot vote for anything, we have to follow them (PAS leadership).
“DHPP will propose that we be allowed to vote and to be able to nominate our representative for a post in the PAS central committee leadership,” he told Malay Mail Online when contacted.
This, said Balasubramaniam, would mean that PAS must amend the party constitution to allow its non-Muslim supporters to take part in the June election.
“We want PAS to include this in their constitution, their party rules and regulations,” he explained, believing that DHPP’s stronger presence on a national level would further boost the Islamist party’s multiracial and multireligious credentials.
The DHPP, formed back in 2010, was ostensibly created as PAS’s response to its growing influence among the non-Malays.
The formation of the wing was also part of PAS’s bid to boost its moderate image after the 2008 general election, where the combined efforts of PAS, DAP and PKR saw Barisan Nasional denied its traditional parliamentary supermajority.
It was also after Election 2008 that PR was formed, forcing together the unlikeliest of political allies under one umbrella ― secularist DAP and Islamist PAS.
The party even fielded candidates from the DHPP in recent by-elections, an indication many observers had remarked as an encouraging sign for a party branded as extremely conservative in the past.
PAS’s renewed hudud push has, however, strained ties within PR and pitted the Islamist party against allies DAP and PKR.
DHPP currently has around 40,000 members.
