PAS-PKR: Like Siamese Twins

Malaysia Today
www.malaysia-today.net
26 May 2005

PAS-PKR: like Siamese twins
Raja Petra Kamarudin

Whether one likes to admit it or not, the Islamic Party of Malaysia
(PAS) and the Peoples’ Justice Party (keADILan) are like Siamese
twins, just like Singapore and Malaysia. When Singapore sneezes,
Malaysia catches a cold. But Malaysia’s and Singapore’s relationship
can best be described as ‘dekat di mata, jauh di hati’ (literally
translated to mean ‘within eyesight but far from the heart’).

And this is how many would describe the relationship between PAS and
keADILan as well.

Is this a fair assessment of the situation? It does not matter. PAS
and keADILan are political parties and in politics it is perception
that counts, even if perception may be a far departure from reality.

PKR, the ‘official’ acronym allowed by Malaysia’s Registrar of
Societies (they just hate the word ‘keadilan’, which means justice,
so they have forbidden it from being used) saw life on 4th April 1999
amidst much pomp and fanfare when it was launched at the then newest
five-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur, the Renaissance Hotel. It was most
apt that this was the venue of the party’s launch as the ‘father’
that spawned the party, Anwar Ibrahim, is also known as The
Renaissance Man, an identity he acquired due to his now famous book,
The Asian Renaissance. Anwar’s battle cry, Reformasi, which means
reformation, another word for renaissance, strengthened this identity
further.

The most crucial thing in any political game (and this applies to
marketing as well) is positioning. If you create the right
positioning, you make it. Create the wrong positioning and you are
doomed to fail before the word ‘go’.

In this sense Anwar has very successfully played the positioning game
since his university days. And that positioning played a very
important role in his meteoric rise up the political ladder that saw
him move from political detainee to Prime Minister-in-waiting in less
than two decades.

In politics it is very difficult to separate fact from fiction or
reality from perception. People perceive you the way they want to.
Whatever you say and do will not help once they have formed an
opinion of you. You need to get it right from the start. It is easier
to build from scratch then try to repair a spoilt image later on.

Anwar and PKR got it right in the beginning. What PKR offered the
people was hope. Everyone needs hope. Hope is the only thing that
keeps us going. Those who lose hope lose the desire to go on living.
Those who lose hope end their lives in most tragic ways.

1999 was the year Malaysians became disillusioned with the ‘system’.
They wanted change and Anwar promised them this change. He gave them
hope. 30 years before that, in 1969, Malaysians went through this
same thing. In the 11 May general election that year, the ruling
Alliance Party was practically trounced and managed to form the
government with only a simple majority, the first and last time such
a phenomena was ever seen in Malaysia. It also lost a couple of
states to the opposition.

Many hoped 1999 would be history repeated. It almost happened. But
all was not lost. 1999 could have been the beginning of the end for
the ruling Barisan Nasional. Give another election or two and Barisan
Nasional would be history.

Then the opposition, still partying from its 1999 election ‘victory’,
went into self-destruct mode.

PAS probably thought it was so well-entrenched in the predominantly
Malay states it went ahead and introduced its Islamic law bill in the
Terengganu State Assembly. This was done without consultation with or
agreement from its three other partners in the Barisan Alternatif
opposition coalition; PKR, Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) and the
Democratic Action Party (DAP). DAP chose to distance itself from PAS’
Islamic law bill by leaving the opposition coalition.

And that was the beginning of the end for Barisan Alternatif. The
ruling party did not even need to strengthen or reinvent itself.
Instead, the opposition did it a favour by self-destructing thereby
giving Barisan Nasional the time it needed to sort out its problems
and solve the Anwar political crisis that was having serious
repercussions on its political fortunes.

The opposition’s fortunes are currently at a standstill. Whether it
is able to recover or will continue its slide downwards is left to be
seen. It cannot keep moving sideways like it is doing now. It has to
either go up again, or go down for good.

And this would all depend on whether Barisan Alternatif is restored
to what it used to be in 1999, with DAP as a member of the opposition
coalition.

Some say PAS must stick to its principles and not ‘sacrifice’ Islam
for the sake of winning the general election. But what principles are
we talking about?

First of all, have all those who demand that PAS ‘stick to its
principles’ read the party constitution? Where in the constitution
does it say PAS aspires to set up an Islamic State? In fact, PAS is
going against its own party constitution by expounding an Islamic
State. Would this, therefore, not be considered going against the
party’s principle?

Secondly, PAS did try this a decade earlier in Kelantan when it won
the state with the help of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s Semangat 46 in
the 1990 general election. It however did not succeed as the effort
was blocked by the Barisan Nasional controlled Parliament.

The attempt to introduce Islamic laws in Kelantan died a natural
death and until now, 15 years later, it is still a non-starter. If
PAS could not do it in Kelantan earlier, what made them think they
can do it in Terengganu a decade later? And the federal government
did warn PAS it would block Islamic laws from being introduced in
Terengganu just like it did a decade before that in Kelantan.

PAS was warned it was going to fail but it persisted. And it did fail
as warned. And this failure had far reaching ramifications resulting
in the break-up of the opposition coalition.

PAS should now know it will never be able to implement Islamic laws
in Malaysia as long as we continue with the present system of
choosing the government. If it wants to change the government through
an Islamic revolution a la Iran then that would be another matter.
Maybe then PAS would have a better chance of seeing success. But
Malaysians are not revolutionary by nature; they are materialistic;
so bloody revolutions do not work here. Anyway, unlike Iran, Malaysia
is only 50% Muslim, plus Malays are not as committed to Islam as the
Iranians are (maybe only about 20% are ‘practicing’ Muslims).

So you can kill the idea of an Islamic revolution. So that leaves
only one option left open to PAS; gain power through parliamentary
elections. But, to do that, it is not enough you have only Muslim
support. You need non-Muslim support as well. But non-Muslims do not
trust PAS. So there goes your non-Muslim support.

In a couple of days, PAS will be holding its party elections. If the
next general election is held in late 2007 or early 2008 as
predicted, this may be the last party election until after the
general election. This means whomsoever the delegates chose as their
new leaders over these next few days would be those leaders who will
lead PAS either to victory or defeat come the 12th General Election.

PAS needs to demonstrate it is a party for all Malaysians, not just
for ‘fundamentalist’ Muslims. And this will reflect in the leaders
the delegates choose.

The problem is: whatever happens to PAS would affect PKR as well. As
I said earlier, PAS and PKR are viewed as Siamese twins. In fact, PAS
is viewed as the elder twin and PKR as the younger sibling. This
perception may be inaccurate but this is how the public sees it.

The PAS delegates who will be choosing its leaders, tabling
resolutions, and debating issues would not only be determining the
future of their own party but the future of PKR as well. If PAS, or
the ‘new’ PAS, is seen as sensible, liberal, tolerant, and so on,
then this would augur well for PKR. But if PAS is seen as regressing
even further, then PKR would be punished for it.

This is very unfair, I know, but this is the reality of the whole
situation. PAS will sink and will drag PKR down with it. The only way
PKR can stay afloat would be by detaching itself from PAS. But that
would not solve PKR’s problems either, for a PKR going solo like DAP
would only mean it would be a party that is drifting and going nowhere.

PAS, PKR and DAP need one other. And they need to all be members of
one opposition coalition. Three ‘independent’ opposition parties
against the ruling coalition of 14 parties would be a cruel joke to
the opposition supporters who stood by Barisan Alternatif these last
six years.

PAS is a political party and let the delegates be reminded of this.
The job of political parties is to win elections. The aspiration of
political parties is to form the government. If the delegates
attending PAS’ general assembly these next few days cannot get this
through their heads, then they should not be in politics. If their
objective is to propagate religion instead of talking about how to
attain power, then they should get out of politics and go join a
dakwah (missionary) movement. And let the proper politicians attend
to the business of kicking the ruling Barisan Nasional out of office.

Sometimes, when the system is so corrupted, no amount of
reprogramming will help. We just have to reformat the hard disk and
reinstall everything all over again. Maybe this is what we need to do
here, wipe out everything and restart from scratch.