COMMENT A proposal that the head-to-head contestants for posts debate each other in the  prelude to the biennial elections of PAS scheduled for the first weekend in June has become the latest episode in the ongoing defenestration of Abdul Hadi Awang.

 

Ustaz Ahmad Awang, challenger to Hadi for the post of president, accepted the proposal with alacrity.

 

He reckons he has nothing to lose and all to gain from going head-to-head with Hadi on what their differing visions on PAS' future are, and how these hold up under the scrutiny of the party's electorate.

 

However, mum's the word from the incumbent president's quarter.

 

This silence, in addition to sundry other indiscretions, are combining to place Hadi in the paradoxical situation where he is the undoubted frontrunner but one whose lead is being reeled in, not so much by the challenger's merits, as by Hadi's unforced errors and mispronouncements.

 

With delegates dissuaded from attending pre-muktamar gatherings where presidential contestant Ahmad is slated to appear, the debate proposal is seen by Ahmad's growing band of supporters as his best chance to project his vision to the PAS electorate.

 

But with Hadi stalling on coming clean on whether he is willing to debate Ahmad ( photo ) or not, the proposal is stalled in a grey zone while the clock is winding down to balloting marking time.          

 

The debate idea was couched in terms that are regarded as ingenious in its attempt to entice candidates to accept the challenge as rejection or even reluctance to agree would detract from their credentials.

 

Hanipa Maidin, PAS central committee member and MP for Sepang, framed the idea as a pathbreaking innovation because he said that rivals Umno has often had contests for top positions in the party but has never come round to actually organising debates between rival nominees for posts.

 

Head-to-head

He said in staging debates between head-to-head contestants in the PAS polls, the Islamic party would be the first in Malaysia to allow candidates for top posts the opportunity to display debating grace under realtime pressure.

 

Hanipa's idea was calculated to appeal to the instincts of party faithful who are chagrined that they are regarded as the subsidiary partner in the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition whereas by size (1 million members) and longevity (PAS is 63 years old) the party is the second oldest (after Umno) in the country.

 

Party stalwarts have been chafing at the seemingly peripheral roles assigned the Islamic party in the overall Pakatan set-up; it appears to them that while their grassroots strength is formidable and relied on by their coalition partners during elections and by-elections, the party's  parliamentary representation (PAS has 21 seats), is inferior to DAP's (37 MPs) and PKR's (29).      

The incumbent Youth chief Suhaizan Kaiat ( photo ), who is defending his post against challenger Nik Abduh Nik Mat , was quick to accept the idea as he saw it as an opportunity to leverage on the expected publicity the debate would generate to draw abreast with Nik Abduh who as an MP (Pasir Mas) enjoys an edge in the publicity stakes because of his status as a parliamentarian.

 

Youths keener

It would seem that the youth candidates are keener to joust with their competitors than the older set, this being attributed to the missionary zeal that youth, especially those in a religious party, are expected to have.

 

A debate between the two contestants for the Youth chief's post could help to take the edge off Nik Abduh's hardline fulminations against what Islamists regard as permissiveness of any sort among youth in Malaysia in respect of their tastes in entertainment and music.

 

Nik Abdul ( photo ) sports the astringent seriousness and forbidding mien of what is known as the mutaween - the religious police in Islamic societies.

 

If he does not mellow and he rises in the party, the next generation of party leaders would wind up being more hardline than Hadi.

 

Pakatan supporters are hoping that Suhaizan wins out, not only in any debate but also in the ballot for the youth wing's headship because he is more amenable to the consensual politics that will keep Pakatan together rather than the rigid orthodoxy that impels Nik Abduh.

 

His stance is better than his president's whose seeming avoidance shunts him to delivering hortatory - and often ill-judged - pronouncements from the rarefied heights he has long occupied in the party's hierarchy, a perch that may well have removed him from being familiar with the ground where his pro-unity government- with-Umno inclinations are said not to resonate with the party faithful.

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.

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