KUALA LUMPUR, June 24 — PAS has clarified that motions approved during the party’s recent muktamar only sought for it to re-evaluate its cooperation with PKR and not to end the relationship.
This “review’, said PAS secretary-general Datuk Takiyuddin Hassan, was open to interpretation and did not mean that party members wanted PAS to discontinue relations with PKR as the Islamist party did with DAP.
PAS maintains that the relationship it formed with PKR during the days of Pakatan Rakyat did not end with the pact’s disintegration.
“There has never been a motion to cut ties with PKR. The motions submitted are to review our relationship with the party; it could be to improve and fix existing weaknesses.
“We won’t cut ties with PKR, especially since we have a healthy relationship in Selangor,” he told Malay Mail Online.
“With all due respect, we also look at PKR and see that they are having problems between themselves, maybe that’s why there were motions brought to review ties with PKR,” Takiyuddin said.
The Kota Baru MP stressed that the motions on PKR were different from PAS’s motion to end ties with DAP in 2015, which was preceded by a period of open hostility between the two.
“That motion (then) was for the Syura Council to study our relationship with DAP, and to see whether such ties were necessary at that point of time. And eventually a decision was made (to cut ties with DAP),” he explained.
Takiyuddin said the muktamar motions on PKR will be discussed at PAS’s upcoming central working committee meeting on Monday, and that a decision will be made then regarding when the matter would be brought to the Syura Council for deliberation.
Last month, PAS approved without debate several motions urging the party to reconsider its relationship with PKR, leaving the final decision in the hands of the influential Syura Council.
PAS information chief Nasrudin Hassan revealed then that the muktamar received at least three motions to review ties with PKR.
Among the reasons for the review are PKR’s relationship with Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah), a party formed last year among PAS’s ousted progressives, and the former’s alleged penchant for making decisions without first consulting its Islamist ally.
During the party’s annual gathering last year, a motion to cut ties with the DAP was approved by the party without debate.
The decision led to the breakup of the Pakatan Rakyat pact and the subsequent formation of a new opposition group involving DAP, PKR and Amanah, but without PAS.
PAS has retained a working relationship with PKR, largely due to the composition of the Selangor administration, in which PAS leaders still sit on the state executive council.
