Mission Impossible?
Sim Kwang Yang
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Is PAS going through another exercise of reinventing itself, now that a new crop of young leaders has come to the fore?
As a political phenomenon, PAS is an amazing force to be reckoned with. They can have a peaceful democratic party election in bringing about the changing of some of the guards, without the usual acrimonious blood-letting that plagues other political parties in a similar situation.
In their half-century of tumultuous existence, they have also displayed great resilience to the vagaries of their changing fortune, surviving their ups and downs through periodic self-renewal and redefinition of their political direction. One cannot say that of many opposition parties in Malaysia.
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Finally, their party president Abdul Hadi Awang has stated the obvious. PAS cannot take power alone. Unfortunately, in the same breath, he also reiterated that PAS will continue to pursue its ultimate objective of establishing an Islamic state, at least in the Malay heartland states.
The public admission that PAS cannot take power alone is significant. It is tantamount to a declaration of intent, that PAS is interested in taking power, not at the state level alone, but also in forming the federal government.
Having held power in Kelantan and Terengganu at various times, the leading lights in PAS may now realize that, without simultaneously holding power at the federal level, sheer victimization by the federal centre alone is sufficient to weaken their ability to sustain their power base in those states. It is a lesson that Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) had to learn at great cost in Sabah when they were an opposition party in Parliament.
Certainly, in the evolution of our federation system, the scale has been tipped heavily in favour of the federal government in federal-state relations. In this unequal distribution of powers between the states and the power centre in Kuala Lumpur, the continued survival of state governments depend very much on the goodwill and largesses of the federal government. In effect, only the Barisan Nasional (BN) can hold power in all 13 states of the Malaysian Federation on a sustainable basis in the long run.
Logical alternative
Most voters know this fact of our political reality, and that is why opposition parties are so weak in all state assemblies in the first place. The hope that opposition parties of various shades and persuasions holding power in a great majority of the 13 states will slowly balance out federal hegemony by the BN federal government is therefore unlikely to find fruition.
There remains the only logical alternative: to replace the BN as the ruling party at the federal level in some future general election. It is such a monumental task that even Hercules - despite his legendary heroic strength - will balk at the difficulties involved.
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Nevertheless, for PAS to even dream of going for federal power is laudable. The proper role of an opposition party in any self-respecting democracy is that of a government-in-waiting. Without this dream, an opposition party will soon atrophy in its most important functions, becoming yet another inconsequential interest group, focused on its survival in the next general election, degenerating into just another vehicle for a small band of party leaders to enjoy the privilege and glamour of becoming YBs.
As most commentators have noted all too frequently, Malaysian politics is condemned to be communal. Since no single communal group in Malaysia can hold power alone, Malaysian politics is also condemned to be coalition politics.
So far, the only successful coalition has been the Barisan Nasional. The opposition parties have tried at various formulae for an alternative coalition. In 1967, after a three-corner fight in Serdang leading to the defeat of Lim Kit Siang as the DAP candidate, an election pact was reached among opposition parties to ensure that only one opposition candidate would stand against the then Alliance candidate in all constituencies in the 1969 general election.
The pact obvious worked to a great extent. The opposition front enjoyed great gains at the polls. Gerakan, then an opposition party, was able to wrestle state control from the ruling parties in Penang. The 1969 race riot obliterated all the opposition gains, and shortly after, Tun Abdul Razak reformed the ruling coalition in a successful attempt to absorb many opposition parties into the BN stable, including the Gerakan in Penang.
Since then, there has always been some form of electoral understanding among opposition parties, especially at the local levels, irrespective of what party leaders may say in public.
Significant vehicle
Unfortunately, among many other things, the whole electoral process has been manipulated beyond recognition, to give a huge though unfair advantage to the ruling parties. The gradual but certain increase in media control has also helped to ensure that PAS would find it hard to form a workable and meaningful coalition with other opposition parties.
The dilemma for PAS is obvious.
There are many reasons behind the emergence of PAS as a significant vehicle for political Islam in Malaysian politics. Certainly, its continued influence among different generations of Muslim Malaysians points to some legitimacy in its political struggle, both as a religious response of many Muslims to a rapidly modernising Westernising world, and as an alternative to the type of political discourse monopolised by Umno.
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Pitted head-on against the juggernaut of the Umno machinery in the Malay-Muslim constituency, and denied the opportunity for dispensing with patronage to supporters, it is inevitable that PAS has had to rely solely on its idealogical purity in a direct appeal to voters’ religious sentiments of the highest degree such as spiritual devotion, unity of the faithful, redemption, and rewards in the afterlife.
In short, PAS has been driven by the logic of their political reality to pursue religious faith to its ultimate end
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 might have reinforced their stand, and given them the inspiration for the idea of establishing an Islamic state. Development in international relations in the last two decades may have defined for them their identity as a movement in political Islam in solidarity with other similar movement s throughout the Islamic world.
Spectacular success
Nevertheless, faced with an awesome political foe in Malaysia, struggling for a viable and distinct political alternative, PAS has been compelled to dig ever deeper in their religious credentials for survival alone.
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From their religiously defined moral high ground, PAS has scored spectacular success against Umno. Certainly, their political message strikes a chord among the Malay-Muslim community.
Unfortunately, their progress has been achieved at the expense of excluding, alienating and even intimidating Malaysians of other faiths and ethnic identities. It is only now that the PAS president has expressed his admission that PAS has indeed marginalised itself from national politics.
A return to mainstream politics would be difficult, given the public perception of PAS as an embodiment of Islamic fundamentalism in Malaysia. The very label conjures up all sort of resentment and fear among people of other faiths. PAS does have an image problem, partly of its own making.
A mere make-over of their political visage is perhaps not sufficient to overcome decades of distrust among believers of other faiths. They really would require a process of soul-searching and re-interpretation of their basic concepts on the idea of political Islam.
For instance, they would have to give increasing emphasis on how PAS can defend and speak out for the interests and rights of non-Muslim communities, in a way that is not always based on doctrinal tenets of their theological beliefs, but rather on the Islamic spirit of God’s divine love for all mankind and universal justice.
They would have to engage themselves actively in dialogues and interactions with political forces that do not share their religious faith.
Ethical imperative
Engaging people of other faiths is probably the hardest thing for PAS to do. It would be very difficult for them to accept that they enjoy no moral high ground with non-Muslims, and that they have to deal with “non-believers” on an equal basis, simply because non-Muslims do not subscribe to the kind of religious authority as Muslims do, especially in the relation between the faithful and the ulama.
Again, the idea is not just to make PAS acceptable to voters of other faiths. After all, PAS is not likely to field candidates in Chinese or Iban constituencies.
This turn towards a more inclusive approach to politics would require them to realize that, working within the constitutional framework as they do, PAS people are also responsible for and accountable to all Malaysians who share the common legacy of the nation’s constitution. Sometimes, I think PAS forgets this ethical imperative in their political discourse.
Without this radical change in their self-image, PAS will always stand in the way of a national opposition alliance. It would be impossible for a third force within the national Malay constituency to forge a pan-Malaysian movement for radical reform through bridging linkages established with like-minded forces at work, including those in Sarawak and Sabah, if PAS remains the old PAS.
The impasse is further aggravated by the fact that there cannot be an effective national opposition alliance without active participation from PAS!
Before sufficient Malaysian voters would even think about an alternative government, they would have to be reassured that in a future election, PAS can knock out Umno without being able to lead a new government on the path towards an Islamic state.
It will take a tremendous amount of statesmanship on the part of all the opposition forces involved. It will also require luck of such dimension that reform minded people in Malaysia have never seen before.
It is Mission Impossible, Malaysian style. Fortunately, only God can pre-determine the future. Man’s job is to try.
