COMMENT Parti Keadilan Rakyat contends that the holy grail of uniting a fractious opposition is achievable.

Opposition supporters would have to wait with bated breath for the magic formula on how PKR would go about enticing theocratic PAS and luring the doctrinaire socialists of PSM into a combined opposition that includes it, DAP and Parti Amanah Negara (PAN).

Presumably, elements of this formula PKR deputy president and Selangor Menteri Besar Azmin Ali would disclose to a press conference he will hold next week.

Meanwhile, he wants intramural hostilities in the opposition ranks to cease and unhelpful speculation to desist.

Suffice, this week PKR, which is already a member of newly-formed opposition group Pakatan Harapan that includes DAP and Amanah, has succeeded in quelling discontent said to be rising within its ranks over the exclusion of PAS from Pakatan Harapan.

Pakatan Harapan was formed on Sept 22 in unseemly haste, according to sections within PKR which are unhappy at the haste and at the exclusion of PAS.

These sections feel that a drawn-out formation process would allow for time in which to coax PAS, in spite of its castigation of Amanah as traitors and its bellicosity towards DAP, to mellow and accept as reality that only a united opposition can bring down the ruling BN.

Never mind that the bitter skirmishing and ideological differences of the last two years between DAP and PAS, followed by the internal tumult in PAS that spawned the creation of the splinter Amanah, has made any rapproachment between contending parties impossible.

PKR, after an emergency meeting yesterday of its central leadership council called specifically to initiate rapproachment, believes that daunting obstacles to unifying the opposiiton can be overcome.

How this was going to be possible, Azmin did not say except to suggest that in a week’s time, he will have glimpsed elements of the magic formula for ventilation to the public.

Not only will PAS be cajoled away from their vaunted hostility to DAP and Amanah but the socialists of PSM will be beguiled into thinking that they belong on the same page.

The triumph of hope over experience

No doubt, all this will reresent the triumph of hope over experience, as Dr Samuel Johnson remarked about a second mariage.

Observers of Azmin’s fervour in wanting PAS to be part of an opposition pact attribute his bias to the backing PAS gave him to become menteri besar of Selangor last year.

Azmin could not get the post he coveted from PKR’s support which was reserved for party president Dr Wan Azizah Ismail; he could only obtain it by the backing of PAS which opposed Azizah’s nomination to be MB.

The Selangor palace weighed-in with its preference for Azmin in the protracted crisis triggered off by PKR’s desire to replace incumbent Khalid Ibrahim and the latter’s stalling against the move.

Azmin knows he owes PAS.

It’s sterile to speculate on the what-might-have-been had Azmin been the preferred PKR nominee to replace Khalid - would he be trying to keep PAS within the opposition fold when PAS is not just a recalcitrant but also an avowed adversary of the DAP and now of Amanah?

Though this stream of speculation is futile, it does tantalise simply from contemplation of the daunting obstacles to welding a united opposiiton front from parties as averse to each other as DAP and PAS have been in the last two years, and as inimical as PAS is wont to be to Amanah.

Furthermore, with PAS adamant on implementing hudud in Kelantan, which is resolutely opposed by DAP, and which PKR and Amanah are cool toward, how is common ground going to be forged among this potpourri of parties?

The search for compatibility is even more fraught if you throw the socialists of PSM into the fray.

Wasn’t it the opposition of PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang to the candidacy of PSM chair Dr Nasir Hashim ( photo ) for the Selangor state seat of Kota Damansara that led to a three-cornered fight between Umno, PAS and the PKR-backed Nasir for the seat in the 2013 election?

Nasir, the incumbent, was beaten by the Umno contender, so the ruling coalition in Selangor lost the seat, to PKR’s detriment in the numbers game in the state assembly.

Azmin may consider all this as water under the bridge but these episodes have made many in the opposition decidedly leery of PAS and of not wanting to touch them with a barge pole.

Can PKR conjure away the bitter legacy of recent experiences the DAP, Amanah, PSM and even PKR have had with PAS to forge an alliance for the to fight BN at the next general election?

It will be the political equivalent of squaring the circle. Maths grad will have to come up with a cracker.

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.