COMMENT The background to the formation of the Pakatan Rakyat government in Perak in the initial days of uncertainty following the coalition’s slim plurality in the March 8, 2008 general election is not well known.

Generally, people with some knowledge of the events are not inclined to talk about them.

This is because the tumult of February the following year, when the Nizar Jamaluddin-led Pakatan government was deposed and replaced by a BN administration, cancelled out in importance the events of 11 months before.

Why dwell on matters that have dwindled in significance when placed against the enormity of the coup d’etat of February 2009?

That coup stripped Pakatan of the right to continue holding the state reins after three members of the state assembly (two from PKR and one from DAP) crossed over to the independent benches, giving BN a tenuous claim to power, which it effected through a combination of political chicanery in the state assembly and legal sophistry in the courts.

Compared with the turbulence of February 2009, the tempest of March 2008 appears, in retrospect, as a storm in a teacup.

The earlier events have, however, resurged in importance in the immediate prelude to next week’s pivotal PAS muktamar in Kuala Selangor. It is being billed as the most important elective assembly in the Islamic party’s 63-year history.

Two factions, one led by conservative theologians and the other composed of professionals who have tried to broaden the party’s appeal to non-Muslims, are in a deadly contest for control.

The current debates about the party’s future have revolved around the fitness of candidates to lead it and in this respect, Ustaz Ahmad Awang’s ( photo ) role in the formation of the Pakatan government in Perak has come in for exhumation and examination.

Ahmad is challenging incumbent Abdul Hadi Awang for the post of president. Yesterday, in Bukit Gelugor in Penang, he submitted to a Q&A on his role in the Perak saga of 2008.

Several of his replies were not only applauded by party members who showed up for the session, but also received standing ovations. The gathering included delegates who would be voting at the muktamar next week.

Ahmad’s chances of victory are rated as slim but his campaign run is seen as critical to the whole effort of keeping PAS within the Pakatan coalition, as the party’s professional group wants it to be.

The conservatives are distinctly cool to Pakatan and have long been suspected of desiring cohabitation with Umno.

It is said that 70 percent of the one million PAS members are against the idea of a unity government between Umno and PAS.

Battle appears to be turning

This statistic gives the professionals confidence to wage a battle for positions in the party hierarchy that at one stage looked headed for failure but now, closer to balloting time, appears to be turning because of growing dismay at the defamatory tactics of those allied to the ulama group and rising unease at what an ulama sweep would mean for intra-Pakatan relations.

Because challenger Ahmad’s candidacy is seen as a bellwether for these anxieties, his stock is rising and his crucial role in the saga of formation of the Pakatan government in Perak in 2008, sparsely dwelt on in the past, is redounding to his advantage, as knowledge of it spreads in the final week of campaigning in the PAS polls.

Ahmad, then the PAS commissioner for Perak, was the main man behind the formation of the Pakatan government drawn from 18 DAP, eight PKR and seven PAS assemblypersons.

The total gave Pakatan a plurality in the state legislature upon which to form a government, but because DAP did not have a Malay among its slate of state representatives and there wasn’t a tertiary qualified one in the PKR fold, it devolved upon PAS to supply the candidate.

Among the elected six representatives of PAS, Nizar Jamaluddin was a holder of a Master’s degree in engineering, and it was he whom Ahmad Awang wholeheartedly recommended to DAP and PKR for their endorsement, which after a quaver or two from the DAP, was obtained for a done deal.

The quick-reacting Ahmad had all three coalition components sign off on the deal for the swearing-in of Nizar the next day, but someone from the upper echelons of PAS attempted to throw a spanner into the works by calling Ahmad on the phone and instructing him to abort the deal and for PAS to tie up with Umno.

Today, the Nizar-starred chapter in Perak’s fleeting 11-month experience of a Pakatan government is seen as a bright shining example of what collaboration among component parties DAP, PAS and PKR can achieve.

The deposing of the Nizar administration is seen by its critics and by Pakatan supporters as a reflex of alarm by Umno-BN at the runaway success of the, albeit, brief tenure of the Nizar administration.

In Bukit Gelugor last night, Ahmad was asked what his reaction was to comments that PAS was a stooge of the DAP during the brief period of the Pakatan state government in Perak.

He asked the questioner if he could cite any action of the state government that could be interpreted as being overly pro-DAP or DAP-directed.

When the questioner could not offer any substantiation, Ahmad pointed to the simultaneous claims of the MCA, Umno’s BN ally, that DAP is a stooge of PAS.

He said the claims cancelled out each other in their absurdity, which is just about what the delegates would say about the more outlandish things that are being said about Ahmad’s candidacy or that of the professional group allied to him.

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.