PKR’s sleight of hand

How Anwar Ibrahim's party handles PAS's opposition to Khalid Ibrahim's ouster.

COMMENT

PKR is using the rhetoric of deception in dealing with the issue of why PAS opposes the removal of Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim. PKR leaders allege that PAS cannot accept Dr Wan Azizah Ismail as Khalid’s replacement because she is a woman.

This is what the Malays call “main silap mata”, or executing the verbal equivalent of a sleight of hand.

PAS has never said it could not accept a woman as Selangor Menteri Besar. The issue, as far as PAS is concerned, is whether there is any good reason to unseat Khalid.

What is it that Khalid has done that warrants his removal? Has he committed any wrongdoing? These questions have been asked by both PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang and the party’s revered spiritual leader, Nik Abdul Aziz Mat. According to them, Khalid has run Selangor well and there are no financial scandals in the state that make it necessary to remove him.

Khalid was appointed Menteri Besar by the unanimous agreement of all three Pakatan Rakyat coalition partners. Each of the three affirmed this agreement in its own letter to the Sultan of Selangor.

Furthermore, Khalid’s name was the only one proposed.

However, just a few months after the 13th general election, PKR boss Anwar Ibrahim changed his mind about Khalid and started planning the Kajang Move, which was launched last January. Neither DAP nor PAS was consulted because PKR considered Khalid a PKR Menteri Besar rather than a Pakatan Rakyat Menteri Besar.

Eventually, DAP agreed to go along with the Kajang Move. But PAS has not.

Why should PAS agree to the Kajang Move when it was a PKR move and not a Pakatan Rakyat move? Is PKR treating the other Pakatan members the same way that Umno treats its partners in Barisan Nasional?

Anwar keeps saying that Pakatan Raykat, unlike Barisan Nasional, works on consensus. This means any decision must be unanimous. If any of the three parties opposes a proposal by one of the other two, that proposal is dead. An example is the implementation of hudud.

In the case of the Kajang Move and the ouster of Khalid, the decision is not unanimous. But still PKR wants to push the issue by forcing PAS to agree to what PKR and DAP want. Is this what PKR means by “consensus”?

Next Sunday, PAS will meet to decide whether to agree to what Anwar and PKR want. If PAS votes yes, then this can be interpreted as a vote of no confidence against Hadi and Nik Aziz. This is how it works in politics.

It would be like Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak tabling the 2015 Budget in Parliament this November. If the opposition plus the members of Barisan Nasional do not approve the budget, this would be translated as a vote of no confidence against the Prime Minister. So you do not need to pass a vote of no confidence to oust the Prime Minister. You just do not approve his budget.

Hence PAS needs to be careful next weekend. A yes vote will send a message to the grassroots that Hadi and Nik Aziz are no longer relevant and no longer wanted. That is going to trigger an internal crisis as serious as the one that happened in 1978, causing the downfall of the PAS government in Kelantan.

For those opposed to the Islamic state and hudud, this would be precisely what they would like to see. PKR and DAP want to maintain Malaysia’s secular state system but they have a problem with the ulama faction in PAS. If the Selangor Menteri Besar issue works against the ulama faction, then the liberals in the party would rise and the ulama will have to ride off into the sunset.

So there is more than just Khalid Ibrahim’s future at stake here. The political culture of PAS will also be affected. Is PAS going to remain an Islamic party or will it transform into a secular party? This will be decided this Sunday.

Roslan Bistamam is a FMT columnist