AUGUST 11 — Malaysian politics has become increasingly comfortable with words such as “understanding”, “cooperation”, “compact” and “electoral pact”.
Yet these terms are not interchangeable.
An understanding can be informal.
An electoral pact can be temporary and transactional.
A political compact implies something considerably deeper: common principles, mutual obligations and some conception of how power will be exercised after the votes have been counted.
This distinction becomes critical whenever PAS enters the equation; especially a Hadi-led PAS.
At any rate, any political entity contemplating cooperation with PAS must understand that the consequences do not end on polling day.
Electoral cooperation creates political association.
Political association creates expectations.
Expectations eventually create obligations.
Once that sequence begins, a supposedly tactical arrangement can acquire strategic consequences that its original architects never intended.
This is especially important for Barisan Nasional as it considers the advantages and disadvantages of cooperation with Perikatan Nasional, within which PAS remains a formidable political force.
The immediate electoral attraction is understandable.
Where parties compete for overlapping Malay-Muslim constituencies, avoiding multi-cornered contests can appear mathematically sensible.
Why ?
Votes that would otherwise be divided can theoretically be consolidated.
But governing Malaysia is not electoral mathematics alone.
Malaysia is a federation of diverse states and territories, communities, economic interests and constitutional arrangements.
Sabah and Sarawak add another indispensable dimension through the historical and constitutional circumstances surrounding the formation of Malaysia and the continuing importance of MA63.
An arrangement that works electorally in one constituency or state therefore cannot automatically be transformed into a national governing formula.
This is where cooperation with PAS becomes strategically consequential.
PAS is not merely another collection of candidates looking for seats.
It carries a distinctive political worldview, leadership culture and conception of the relationship between religion, society and government.
Other parties are perfectly entitled to cooperate with it.
But they cannot reasonably expect such cooperation to remain politically cost-free.
The first repercussion is reputational.
When two political organisations repeatedly campaign together, defend one another and ask voters to support each other’s candidates, voters naturally begin treating them as politically connected.
A party cannot indefinitely tell one electorate that PAS is merely a tactical partner while reassuring another that PAS will exercise no influence over a future government.
The second repercussion concerns bargaining power.
Every seat delivered by a partner increases that partner’s leverage after an election.
If PAS becomes indispensable to the formation of a government, its influence will not necessarily correspond merely to the number of ministries it receives.
Its bargaining strength comes from the possibility that the government cannot survive comfortably without its continued support.
That creates a potentially profound problem.
A coalition dependent upon PAS must continuously consider what PAS might accept, reject or demand.
The centre of political gravity can consequently move even without formal constitutional changes.
The third repercussion involves Sabah and Sarawak.
Any Peninsula-based coalition contemplating federal power must understand that Malaysia cannot be governed as though Borneo were an electoral afterthought.
Political forces in Sabah and Sarawak have their own constituencies, regional interests and understandings of federalism.
MA 63 makes the federal relationship even more consequential.
A governing formula perceived as excessively dominated by one ideological conception of Malay-Muslim politics could therefore encounter substantial resistance in East Malaysia.
The fourth repercussion is governmental stability.
An electoral pact requires discipline before an election.
Government requires discipline every day thereafter.
Coalition partners must agree on budgets, legislation, appointments, economic priorities, education, federal-state relations, foreign policy and thousands of administrative decisions.
Disagreement is unavoidable.
The critical question is how disagreement is managed.
If walking away, boycotting proceedings or publicly repudiating coalition partners becomes an accepted political instrument, every disagreement acquires the potential to become a test of government survival.
What begins as an electoral alliance can consequently become a permanent negotiation conducted under pressure.
The fifth repercussion falls upon political moderation itself.
Malaysia’s middle ground is much larger than the membership of any political party.
It includes Malays who want Islam respected without perpetual political confrontation, Chinese and Indians who want equal security in the federation, Sabahans and Sarawakians protective of their constitutional position, businesses demanding predictability, young Malaysians seeking opportunity and ordinary families primarily concerned with wages, housing, education and the cost of living.
Any coalition seeking to govern Malaysia must speak to this enormous centre.
If cooperation with PAS causes another party to move progressively towards PAS’s political vocabulary merely to preserve the partnership, the larger partner may discover that it is no longer absorbing PAS electorally.
PAS may instead be reshaping the coalition politically.
That is the strategic paradox.
The party that believes it is borrowing PAS’s electoral machinery may eventually find itself borrowing PAS’s political positions too.
This is why BN, PN and every other political organisation considering cooperation with PAS must distinguish clearly between an understanding, a compact and an electoral pact.
If it is merely an electoral arrangement, its boundaries must be understood.
If it is a governing compact, Malaysians deserve to know the principles underlying it.
If it is an ideological partnership, then the participating parties should be prepared to defend its consequences openly.
Ambiguity may be useful during elections.
It is dangerous in government.
Malaysia is too diverse, too economically interconnected and too constitutionally intricate to be governed through political arrangements whose participants themselves have not determined what their partnership actually means.
PAS has every democratic right to seek power, expand its influence and negotiate with other parties.
Other political organisations have an equally democratic right to cooperate with it.
But political choices generate political consequences.
No party can enter a consequential partnership, benefit from the votes it produces and subsequently insist that it bears no responsibility for the direction taken by that partnership.
An electoral pact lasts until the ballots are counted.
A political compact determines what happens afterwards.
And when PAS becomes indispensable to that compact, every partner must understand that it is no longer negotiating merely over seats.
It is negotiating over the future direction of Malaysia.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and a director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
