JUNE 4 — Malaysia’s Islamist opposition party will see its most bitterly-fought party election today and the result is likely to decide the future of the three-party Pakatan Rakyat (PR) opposition coalition and the outcome of the next general election.
For the first time in decades, an incumbent president of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) is being challenged. The campaigning has been tainted by character assassination and patronage, which is usually associated more with its arch-rival, United Malays National Organisation (Umno).
Ahmad Awang, 79, a former vice-president who takes on the president, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, 67, is accused of being “a Jewish agent” and “a Shia”, labels despised by the majority of Sunni Muslims in Malaysia.
The incumbent deputy president, Mohamad Sabu, has been called “DAP’s dog” for his close ties with the secular, Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party (DAP) and for his personal friendship with DAP leader Lim Guan Eng, who was his cellmate in political detention in 1987.
The Islamist party is deeply divided over its choice of friends and foes in a political landscape where ethno-nationalism and religion cut deep.
Mr Ahmad and Sabu are leading figures of the progressive camp, which wants to keep PAS within PR, along with DAP and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), a centrist party led by Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the wife of former Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim.
Mr Hadi Awang leads the hardliner faction, which prefers to work closer with Umno and contemplates forming a Unity Government (UG) to protect Malay-Muslim interests and accelerate Islamisation.
The pro-PR faction believes that PAS will be condemned to its regional base in the north-eastern Malay-heartland states of Kelantan and Terengganu if it abandons the PR pact and is rejected by the non-Muslim and middle-ground voters.
Abandoning the goal of a theocratic state, the party’s “PAS for all” positioning in the 2008 general election saw it increasing its parliamentary seats to 23 from a mere seven in 2004, and helming two ethnically-mixed states. Five years later, in the 2013 general election, PR won 51 per cent of the votes against the 47 per cent won by the Umno-led ruling coalition Barisan Nasional (BN).
Due to malapportionment and gerrymandering of constituencies, PR was condemned to stay in the opposition’s bench with 40 per cent of the parliamentary seats.
Two years after the near-miss, Umno is now on the verge of implosion.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak is under fierce attack by both the opposition and former PM Tun Mahathir Mohamad over the debt-laden state-owned strategic development firm 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
Meanwhile, the newly-imposed 6 per cent Goods and Services Tax has unsurprisingly not gone down well with Malaysia’s lower and middle classes.
A united opposition stands a good chance in the next general election to dislodge the Umno -led coalition, which has ruled since 1955.
In 2008, the previous time Dr Mahathir attacked a Prime Minister (TunAbdullah Badawi), BN lost 49 per cent of the votes and 36 per cent of the seats and the big swing was dubbed a “political tsunami”.
Hadi’s branding strategy
However, for Hadi and the hardliners, PAS’ raison d’etre in building Islamic society and governance is lost in multiethnic coalition politics. They are frustrated by the objection of DAP and PKR over their agenda to impose more religious restrictions on Malaysian society.
Keen to win back its Malay support and break PR, Umno has offered PAS hardliners an irresistible carrot: Implementation of Syariah criminal law in PAS’ stronghold state of Kelantan.
Governing only Muslims, the law carries “hudud” punishments such as amputation for theft and robbery, stoning for adultery and at least 40 lashes of the whip for drinking.
PAS’ previous attempts to introduce state-level Syariah criminal laws were unequivocally blocked by the Umno-led federal government. Umno’s tacit support for PAS’ push for hudud is therefore indicates a party shift towards Islamism.
Nevertheless, Kelantan still faces two obstacles. Constitutionally, criminal justice is a federal matter. Legally, punishments delivered by Syariah Courts have a “three-five-six” cap, — namely, imprisonment up to three years, fine up to RM5,000 (S$1,830) and whipping up to six strokes.
Hadi is now tabling a private member’s Bill in the Parliament to first remove the three-five-six cap. He has called on all Muslim parliamentarians to vote for the Bill as their religious duty. The diverse views on hudud laws in the global Muslim community are simply ignored and dismissed.
Hadi’s adamant push for Syariah expansion has led to DAP threatening a complete break with PAS.
In 1995 and 2001, DAP left previous opposition coalitions when PAS pushed its theocratic agenda.
If Hadi’s faction wins today, PAS’ days in PR are numbered. The fate of PR itself is also uncertain.
A splinter group, PASMA, is already waiting in the wings to replace PAS in Pakatan or its substitute if that happens. But PASMA and even PKR Muslims then would have tough time fighting off labels of being a “DAP/Chinese/Christian lackey” by Hadi’s PAS in the next election.
PAS, itself a splinter of Umno, first competed against Umno on the platform of Malay nationalism. When the clergy faction took over PAS’ leadership in 1982, it dismissed Malay nationalism as “racism” (assabiyah) in pursuit of Islamism.
An ideologue par excellence, Hadi carved out a powerful branding strategy to distinguish PAS from the then secular Umno in 1981, saying: “We (PAS) oppose BN not because they are long in power. We oppose it because it keeps the colonial constitution, infidels’ laws and pre-Islamic (jahiliyah) rules.”
It is a powerful message for many Muslims who still resentfully see Malaysia’s plural society as a colonial imposition. Frustrated by their economic backwardness despite four decades of affirmative action policies, many are now worried that non-Malays have become politically assertive.
The pro-PR leaders in PAS, who are more pragmatic than progressive, have not dared to directly challenge the “politics of pre-colonial restoration”. High priests of inclusive Islamism are yet to be found in PAS to take on Hadi ideologically.
Take youth chief Suhaizan Kaiat, for example.
While warning against the electoral price of alienating non-Muslims, he has paradoxically called for other states to emulate Kelantan in Syariah expansion.
In their campaigning, Ahmad and his team-mates have been pounding on the singular message that PAS needs PR to win elections.
It is a call based on pragmatism, but it may ultimately be counter-productive for the moderates in the Islamist party.
From a religious logic, if PAS is to lose elections for standing firm on Islam, its leaders and members will be rewarded in the next life by Allah. — TODAY
* Dr Wong Chin Huat is a political scientist from Penang Institute in Malaysia.
** This story was first published here.
*** This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the view of the Malay Mail Online.
