JULY 16 — It’s not common, PAS’ reaction to the Johor polls.
For a party — and its coalition — to be euphoric in catastrophic defeat. PAS is leading its Norwegian Row version in stadiums nationwide for right-wingers. Screaming ferocity unmatched by multicultural modern Vikings.
Thirty-three Perikatan Nasional candidates lost and only 12 avoided deposit forfeiture. PAS got 2.4 per cent state support, or under 49,000 votes.
Yet, party leadership is delirious, and just cannot wait for the Negeri Sembilan State Election to kick off on Saturday. In their minds, they possess the big mo. How, incredibly how?
PAS cares not for Johor, or Negeri Sembilan and even Melaka. It eyes national power by building up a feverish “us against us” race armageddon throttled into a Malays snowstorm, from which it emerges as the most senior leader by being the most unapologetic about race politics.
It bypasses all policy, development and social upliftment questions, by posing back only one question in repeat, “Do you want Malay leadership?”
Its systemic and comprehensive demolition of Bersatu while together inside PN is death by a thousand cuts. But nobody cares outside the two metres between Muhyiddin Yassin and Azmin Ali, PAS is on a higher mission.
PAS, and obviously the rest of PN dragged in, may lose all 120 seats in the three states but by securing Pakatan Harapan’s devastation and the election of Malay-first administrations it intensifies the pressure to insert all these in the Muafakat Nasional bag.
In the larger picture, a BN win is a PAS win if eventually all agree to sit inside the larger umbrella led by PAS. By the same token, every DAP – by extension Pakatan – defeat reduces threats to the grand union of Malay power.
This is why less than 60 hours before the Johor polls, PAS President Hadi Awang gathered all 11 PAS candidates in Muar and promised to hand over its wins to shore up Umno if it did not have enough.
In a roundabout way, it was to encourage its base to forego support for the PN candidate even from PAS in races which BN and Pakatan were going toe to toe. And sure enough, BN coasted to its best result since 2013.
PAS has found its formula.
The game inside the game
BN negotiates with PAS for Negeri seats, curiously, not with PN. The coalition chairman Samsuri Mokhtar forgets not he is PAS vice-president. In hindsight the 2016 Amanah split has reduced internal transgressions today to near zero inside the party.
It’s not straightforward for BN. PAS can guarantee them Negeri and after Melaka, but complications ensue.
Umno was born from the unity of Malay associations in 1946 to oppose a progressive charter for the peninsula, with Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM) with its leftist ideology providing the activist spine and membership numbers. PKMM left in a huff and inadvertently helped create Umno’s substance.
Movements can swallow up minor pieces, and Umno does not want to appear on the menu.
Umno President Zahid Hamidi knows PAS is an existential threat but after its Rumah Bangsa zeal throughout 2026, it cannot reject calls for unity. But it does not want to be outflanked by the Islamists.
Let’s use the spice levels used at Nando’s restaurants to see how Umno can be outwitted eventually.
Newcomer Bersama is between lemon & herb and mild, it upholds the status quo with Malay leadership. PKR and Amanah are decidedly mild.
But Umno monopolises the sweet spot between mild and hot, toying with extra hot on rare occasions, the gold standard of being race-first but conciliatory to other races.
Bersatu tries to mimic Umno but recently lost its mojo. PAS, Wawasan, Pejuang and Putra reside purely in the extra hot section.
A single mode is risky only if a counter proposition extinguishes the mindless barbs. But if not, it is a blue ocean for PAS and gang.
If one ventures to read about how a joint effort among democrats, Marxists, civil activists and Islamists to overthrow the Shah only ended with the Islamic Republic of Iran, or how Kuomintang was infiltrated by the Communist Party in the 1920s or how earlier the Bolsheviks upended the Mensheviks in their united initiative to democratise Russia, it’s all about shaping the narrative while the larger identity drive is underway.
Now you know why PAS is pleased as punch. It only wants to secure Muslim solidarity and raise the spectre of DAP as an existential threat to the Muslim way of life.
The underclass and minorities
The base voters are unaware they write a blank cheque to the solidarity leaders.
The leaders get cover, nothing they have done, or failed to do matters.
Therefore, after the election, including the general, they are not incentivised to do or keep promises, just to repeat identity rhetoric.
Those who reject their decisions are opposed to Malay unity.
The city flat residents and food deliverers continue to live in the same economic circumstance as before elections. They conflate their predicament as an outcome of not enough race power, when the real issue is class power.
And race relations flatlines if PAS gets its utopia.
The relationship with Borneo also becomes frictional and most certainly attritional in a Semenanjung more determined to keep race divides rather than draw in both east and west into the Malaysian project.
But more so, viscerally PAS wants a divided nation. It accepts citizenship but it prefers tiers in the country. Malaysians have to ask themselves if that is what they want.
Because PAS’ rhetoric emphasises that a large number of Malaysians are actually more from Nagapattinam or Panyu rather than Morib or Gopeng. And permanently so.
In the current climate of race overdrive and minority disenchantment with a regressive dysfunctional federal government, PAS’ goals are highly achievable.
Secure a warm glow of religiosity in the country and take over the pulpit as the most committed to the cause. The simplicity of the plan makes it even more outrageous.
I have no riposte.
A moral quandary descends upon the country, which only each voter can decide for his or herself.
It’s clearly not the country the majority of youths want but they are so hamstrung and disempowered that they cannot act. They only can watch the trainwreck occur and gasp too late in horror.
I was in a van last Friday evening in the backroads of Hulu Langat, my colleague’s husband driving. He asked me about politics while his wife and four young children sat at the back around stacks of durian.
A lot of frustration as he explained leaving PKR for PAS because the party does not lie. I did not understand how to answer him in a way to convince him that a bigger Malaysia is better than a shallow, narrow and divided nation. I don’t have the rhetoric to match the haters.
I do remember reading Nelson Mandela. He wrote people are not born to hate, they are taught to hate.
If one can learn to hate, then one can be taught to love. A bit of faith goes a long way.
For this man wanted to love his captors rather than punish them for the decades he spent inside prison cells. Love.
The eldest kid in the van turned 11 yesterday. Our birthdays are a day apart. I am desperate that the country I leave behind does not keep us oceans apart because of our names. Under these Malaysian skies.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
