Is Pakatan Rakyat dead? That depends on whom you ask.

 

With DAP, it's clear-cut: PAS' highest decision-making body, the muktamar, has approved a motion that the party cuts ties with DAP.

 

Since Pakatan is a DAP-PKR-PAS coalition, should PAS want nothing to do with DAP, then Pakatan is no more.

 

With PAS, it's clear-cut as well. It says DAP cannot unilaterally say Pakatan is dead. Moreover, PAS’ executives have yet to decide on the muktamar motion.

 

With PKR, however, things are a little more convoluted.

 

A day after DAP declared Pakatan's death, PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail released a brief statement that the coalition is in the state of dysfunction. This is the relevant paragraph, in full:

 

"PKR expresses regret on the resolution that was accepted without debate at the 61st PAS muktamar and subsequently, the DAP central executive committee's announcement of the end of Pakatan Rakyat that PKR considers hasty.

 

"In light of this, the political coalition that is Pakatan Rakyat no longer functions formally."

 

Azmin Ali, the PKR deputy president, has been quick to accuse the press of misinterpreting Wan Azizah's press statement.

 

"Who says Pakatan no longer exists?" Azmin told reporters yesterday, while urging them to study Wan Azizah's statement carefully.

 

A day earlier, Azmin told reporters in Kelantan that Pakatan was salvageable .

 

Thus far, Azmin appeared to be the only senior party figure to have shown such optimism.

 

No other PKR leader, including those who were involved in the Tuesday night leadership meeting at which the statement was drafted, have come out to say the same.

 

Even jailed PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim, widely attributed as the glue that had held DAP and PAS together till now, appears to have accepted that it is time to move on .

 

Nothing to dissolve

 

But Azmin does have a point. When Wan Azizah said Pakatan "no longer functions formally", she never said the coalition was dissolved.

 

Azmin wants all three parties to talk things through, a prospect that seems unlikely, at least for now.

 

This begs the question of why Azmin, the third most powerful person in PKR, decided to give the crucial Tuesday night meeting a skip.

 

Had he been there, Wan Azizah's statement could have been worded differently.

 

Perhaps he knew it was a forgone conclusion and it would be better to be seen in Kelantan with prominent figures in PAS, the party that had backed him as Selangor menteri besar instead of Wan Azizah.

 

Perhaps Azmin knew it would be unwise to show even the slightest inclination towards DAP's stand on Pakatan's demise, which is how most media organisations read Wan Azizah's statement, since DAP did not back him as MB during the Selangor administrative crisis last year.

 

Azmin cannot afford to lose the support of PAS. Without their support, Azmin may go down in history as the shortest-lived MB of Selangor, for DAP and PKR alone do not have the numbers to rule the state.

 

Regardless of whether Pakatan ceases to exist or not, Selangor will continue, for now, as the only "true Pakatan" state.

 

Unlike in Penang and Kelantan, which are dominated by their respective leading parties, DAP and PAS in Selangor will still have to face each other in the state cabinet, local government meetings, select committees and the state’s public accounts committee, among other institutions, since both parties have pledged support for Azmin as the present MB.

 

In other words, DAP and PAS will still have to cooperate. That's Azmin's "Pakatan" right there.

 

Hopefully, all three parties will focus on governance from now on and not be pedantic.

 

But to be truly pedantic, this writer would like to point out that Pakatan was never formally registered as a coalition in the first place.

 

They are not a legal entity. They contest elections under different flags. So how can they break up or make up now?

 

 

ANDREW ONG has been part of Malaysiakini 's editorial team since 2005.