29 July, 2008
(Radio Singapore International) - Cracks have begun to emerge in Malaysia’s three-party opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat.
The Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP) has openly declared it wants the alliance to review Parti Islam SeMalaysia’s (PAS) membership in the grouping.
Recent speculation over a possible defection by PAS to join the ruling UMNO party has raised doubts over its credibility as a member of the opposition alliance.
Professor K S Nathan (KSN), Deputy Director of the Institute of Occidental Studies at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, tells Jason Tan that ideological differences between Pakatan alliance members continue to cause problems.
KSN: We have to bear in mind that Pakatan Rakyat is a combination that came together as a result of the elections. In other words, the post-election scenario has produced this Pakatan Rakyat. Now, whether they will be able to form the next government remains open, simply because there are serious ideological differences between the DAP on the one hand, which wants a secular-Malaysian Malaysia, and on the other hand PAS, which still wants the Islamic state. They have not been able to resolve this, so there are many questions that remain to be answered as to whether the Pakatan Rakyat will ever be able to cobble together a strong coalition that will be able to topple the present government.
DAP National chairman Karpal Singh has openly called for a review of PAS’ membership in the grouping. Based on their recent discussions with UMNO, is this altogether surprising?
KSN: No, it’s not surprising, simply because we know that the DAP and PAS have never at all seen eye-to-eye on the future direction of Malaysia, where religion is concerned. The DAP clearly wants to follow the federal constitution, that Malaysia is essentially a secular state, although there are of course visions for declaring Malaysia officially Islamic, in the sense that the constitution provides for Islam as the official religion. But that doesn’t make Malaysian an Islamic state, so there are very, very, sort of crucial legal differences between an Islamic state and Islam being the official religion of Malaysia. So I think they’re still not agreed on how this combination will work itself out to the mutual interests of both parties. That is to say, that while Islam enjoys official status, it does not necessary follow therefore, that the other religions are going to be sort of put aside, or the interests of the followers of other faiths will not be sufficiently considered. So I think they’re not sure what PAS’s stand is on this.
What impact would the expulsion of PAS from the Pakatan Rakyat alliance have on the five states they currently rule?
KSN: Well in the first place, I do not think they’ll be expelled. I think there is a lot of politic-ing that is going on. There are many side-issues that have also intervened in the main political scenario. So they may be just posturing and sort of indicating positions which they don’t really believe in. Clearly, I don’t think it is on the cards that PAS might abandon the Pakatan, or whether these Malay-unity talks will really result in something very concrete.
In related news, PAS has called for UMNO and PAS to dissolve and form a new Islam-based party which would unite all Malays in the country. Do you agree with UMNO’s assessment that this idea is premature?
KSN: Well I think in the first place, asking for just Malay unity at the expense of Malaysian unity could be pretty risky business because is you take even Prime Minister Abdullah’s own position when he came into power. He said he was a Prime Minister for all Malaysians. So if he is a Prime Minister for all Malaysians, and if he now focuses on the unity of just one particular race, whether it is Malays, Chinese or Indians, we might be missing the point about what the General Election results have proven. I think you are having a new generation of Malaysians and a new way of thinking about politics, that they would like to think Malaysian about all these issues, rather than sort of harp on these very pre-mordial sentiments which actually have got us where we are today, and leaving UMNO to sort of wonder what really happened to the magic that has been working for the last fifty years, which might not work anymore. So therefore, I think they have not quite resolved many many issues between them, because the operating ideology of UMNO and the operating ideology of PAS are two different things. And I would sort of not be so easily taken in by the fact that this is suddenly going to produce Malay unity. They have not shown any Malay unity for all this while you know, there has been PAS’ version of Islam and there has been the UMNO version of Islam. So they have disagreed very fundamentally on how they see the religion and the role of religion in politics and in society. They’re not going to solve it overnight just because of the election results of March 8.
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