COMMENT Is PKR now having second thoughts about the newly-formed opposition coalition called Pakatan Harapan?

That appears to be the case, from signs emerging from one faction of the party that has called and obtained a meeting of its central leadership council for Oct 11.

A petition signed by several members of the council calling for the meeting has been sent to the party secretariat.

The gist of the petition calls into question the wisdom of proceeding so swiftly, from what was supposed to be a preliminary discussion among leaders of opposition parties and NGOs on forming a new coalition, to its actual launch a day after the exploratory discussion was held.

Apparently, the signatories feel this launch was too hasty; more time, they contend, should have been given for other components within the opposition fold to mull the modalities of a new coalition before actually moving to formalise one.

A longer period of gestation, the signatories feel, should have been allowed in the interest of greater inclusiveness.

Interpretation: the signatories are unhappy that not enough time has been afforded for an extended courtship of PAS, which optimists in PKR feel would eventually result in the theocratics agreeing to enlist with the only opposition set-up that can end BN's 58-year rule.

This prognosis has only one thing going for it. This is that even such espousers of cohabitation with Umno in PAS, such as its president Abdul Hadi Awang and its spiritual leader Dr Haron Din, know now that the dominant party in the ruling BN coalition is decayed beyond redemption and the time is nigh for the opposition to take over.

Even the erractic and inconsistent Hadi, in his most recent public pronouncements, has conceded that Umno is tired and ought to rest.

‘Non-Muslims must now find it easier to accept Islam’

He said that PAS should take Umno's place at the nation's helm and that PAS-resistant Chinese and Indian voters in Malaysia should come round to accepting the Islamic party because the non-Muslims, who had at one time accepted the failed ideology of Marxism, must now find it much easier to accept Islam.

Nobody in the faction of PKR that is desirous of keeping PAS within the opposition's ambit would lend any credence to the nonsense that periodically issues from the PAS president.

But that they think this gibberish will not lose votes for PAS, even among the party's faithful, is hard to credit.

The many non-Muslims who voted for PAS at the last general election in 2013 are not likely to do an encore at the next election.

They feel they can't trust PAS to keep its word after the party demonstrated that its subscription to the common policy framework (CPF) of the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat did not bind the party to forsake introducing hudud in Kelantan.

In spite of PAS' obduracy on hudud, some circles in PKR think that PAS must not be discounted as an ally in the fight to end BN rule.

It is assumed in these circles that PAS is strong at the grassroots and that their over one million members are apt to work and vote for the party reflexively, without considering the effect of its top leaders' inconsistent and erratic pronouncements that have resulted in a breakaway - Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) - being formed.

The way PAS members voted in Permatang Pauh

This assumption is questionable. The most recent demonstration of its doubtful validity was the way PAS members voted in the by-election for Permatang Pauh earlier this year.

The seat fell vacant after Anwar Ibrahim was jailed in February, after his Federal Court appeal against a conviction for sodomy failed.

His wife Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail stood in his vacated stead amid anxiety in PKR that what objections PAS posed against her nomination to replace Khalid Ibrahim as menteri besar of Selangor in 2014 would be revived towards her candidacy for Permatang Pauh and, by inevitable extension, her certain nomination to be the parliamentary opposition leader, the role Anwar held prior to his jailing.

In that event, stalwart PAS voters in Permatang Pauh ignored the bad vibes about Wan Azizah's candidacy emitted by the party's hierarchy in Penang and voted in the PKR president.

Wan Azizah retained the constituency for PKR with a 8,000-plus majority that was better than the margin that initial expectations of outcome had envisaged.

Also, after the floods in Kelantan early this year, doubts have arisen as to whether PAS can retain the state at the next general election in 2018.

Crystal ball-gazing is risky business but the assumption that PAS is as strong as their current registry of members suggests, and as cohesive as it was before the disruptive and erractic phase to Hadi's leadership began in early 2014, is equally conjectural.

It's better to deal with hard facts as they continually emerge than be bemused by the realities that may no longer apply or have changed.

A sure way of determining what's solid and what's not is to see what the leaders of PAS say: they want no truck with DAP or Amanah and this they have stated unequivocally.

How then is PKR to keep its ties to PAS if it thinks that both DAP and Amanah are also vital to the opposition's well-being?

PKR has to choose and the choice should be determined by its ideology, which is more compatible with DAP's and Amanah's.

In the absence of such a choice, voters will think that PKR has no ideology, that it has only a hankering after popularity, like PAS had when it employed the slogan, 'PAS for All', to win votes in the last general election.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.