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.

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.