COMMENT PAS spiritual leader Nik Aziz Nik Mat yesterday showed why he is probably the most beloved of leaders of what is increasingly referred to as ‘Middle Malaysia’.

Just back from performing the umrah, a weary Nik Aziz made a beeline for the hustings in Hulu Selangor to lend his considerable stature to the faltering campaign of Pakatan Rakyat candidate Zaid Ibrahim.

All week Zaid has had to weather personal attacks on his Islamic deportment by Umno leaders, including Dr Mahathir Mohamad, not known to scant an opportunity to do adversaries down when it avails.

hulu selangor by-election 230410 nik aziz support zaid ibrahim The attacks on Zaid’s rectitude have reputedly diminished the prospects of his retaining for PKR the Hulu Selangor parliamentary seat.  

It is not certain his supporters within PKR who pushed his candidacy for the semi-rural seat had weighed the possibility of Zaid’s ‘religiously suspect’ past redounding to his disadvantage in the campaign.

But it is more certain that such attacks on his rectitude would have been difficult to bring off in the compressed span of a general election and in the setting of an urban mixed-race constituency for which the former Umno cabinet minister is more suited.

As a portent of things to come, the paucity of PAS flags in Hulu Selangor on the eve of nomination day on April 17 was indicative of PAS’ reservations on the suitability of Zaid’s candidacy in a seat where Malay/Muslims constitute 52 percent of the electorate.

Even after the campaign started, those flags were conspicuous by their relative absence in Hulu Selangor.

NONE And when the Umno attacks on Zaid’s self-admitted past indulgence in alcohol began, the tepid enthusiasm of the PAS commitment to the Pakatan effort to elect Zaid retrospectively gained justification.

Which is why the decision of the iconic Nik Aziz to wade into the electoral fray in favour of Zaid, and to disregard its consequences for his lofty Islamic stature, endears him to ‘middle’ Malaysians.

An evolving concept

The term ‘Middle Malaysia’, coined by DAP secretary-general Guan Eng, has gained credence since the time the Penang chief minister aired it at the party’s general assembly last year.

It has come to demarcate positions on issues of politics, culture and religion in Malaysia that can broadly be called ‘middle of the road’.

It is an evolving concept. No doubt many other players on the national political scene would in time come to air their variation on this theme.

NONE By his decision to personally come to Hulu Selangor to back Zaid, Kelantan’s durable menteri besar has shown - not for the first time - that he is not a captive of dogma, and thus a potential contributor to the evolution of the ‘Middle Malaysia’ concept.

One can’t be sure that as an avowed Islamist, the PAS spiritual leader would be comfortable viewing himself as a proponent of ‘Middle Malaysia’.

But it is certain he has demonstrated several times in his career that he is not a monist, someone who is possessed by one idea, a central meaning to which all experience is related.  

That kind of exclusivity is harmful. In diverse, protean Malaysia it maims the sensibilities and for that reason is dangerous.

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.