COMMENT Judging from the exchanges thus far, nearly all the good arguments are from the one side and poor ones are from the other in the ‘progressives versus conservatives’ battle for control which comes to a head at the PAS elective muktamar in June.

There is greater rationalisation on the progressives’ side of the verbal war, whereas the arguments of the conservatives are compounded of name-calling and imputations of disloyalty to others.

The progressives make a point to furnish reasons for their stand and they show a greater readiness to debate detractors.

By contrast, the conservatives are content to stand on their pedigree and to label the other side with pejoratives from an Islamic standpoint, such as ‘liberal’ and ‘pluralistic’.

If you are of democratic persuasion, you would think that the progressives are headed for victory because of the reasonableness of their arguments, but this is an Islamic party, hence the superiority of reason is not a touchstone.

This is reinforced by the speculation of the party’s secretary-general, Mustafa Ali, that the incumbent president is expected to be uncontested in the party polls.

Abdul Hadi Awang ( right ) is seen as firmly of the conservatives’ camp and if he is going to be unchallenged in the election that should mean candidates from the faction allied to the president should turn out to be easy winners in the contests for posts.

However, only somebody unaware of the history of elections in PAS would wager that the president’s men are going to be runaway victors in the party polls.

If Hadi Awang is almost certain of being uncontested as president, that reality is owed to the decision of the party made way back in 1982 to have its ulamas lead it.

Even present members of the progressive wing, who were in their youth during that time, supported this decision to have the theologians in the forefront of its ranks.

PAS was seen as emulating the Iranian model of leadership by Islamic jurists, inaugurated by Ayatollah Khomeini.

In fact their Unit Amal, the uniformed corps which ensures discipline at party gatherings and has done yeoman’s work at Pakatan Rakyat’s public rallies in recent years, is modeled on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, minus the notoriety that the latter body has come to acquire.

So the PAS progressives are stymied by the very decision they chose, in their youthful ardour more than three decades ago, to back leadership of the party by the jurists.

Regarded as a leading theologian

Hadi is regarded, not just in Malaysia but in the Islamic world, as a leading theologian - he is in the second tier of leadership of the world body for ulamas - and so well-nigh irreplaceable as PAS president.

A competitor for the party presidency would have to be somebody with comparable theological credentials to stand any chance of wresting the post, leave alone the unlikely probability that such a candidate would be progressive in orientation.

The prospects for the progressives are dimmed further by the likelihood that incumbent deputy president Mohamad Sabu will be challenged by a more popular ulama than the one (Nik Amar Nik Abdulah, the current Deputy Menteri Besar of Kelantan) who contested against him and lost in the last party election in 2013.

If that candidate is incumbent vice-president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man ( left ), as is being bruited about, he is favoured to win.

That would essentially leave the three vice-presidencies and 20 central committee positions for candidates from the progressive faction to garner for themselves.

The prospects of a good showing by the progressives for these positions are not sanguine; they can do well only if a majority of the PAS delegates to the muktamar want the party to persist with collaboration in Pakatan rather than flirt with Umno.

From the talk of the more strident spokespersons of the conservatives, it appears that they not only want the progressives defeated but extruded from the party.

The fact that the party has called up Mohamad Sabu and its election director, Dr Hatta Ramli, who is MP for Kuala Krai, to answer complaints made against them for allegedly plotting to oust Hadi, is taken as a sign that matters are trending against the progressives.

This is ominous for the progressives because when two heavyweights from the progressive faction are called up for seeming offences against the ba’iah (allegiance) oath that all PAS candidates who stand in parliamentary and state elections have to take, the negative light this casts on them is difficult to shed.

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.