PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang has confirmed that the party would not participate directly in the Bersih 4 rally.

The party would instead send only two representatives, namely PAS vice-president Idris Ahmad and regional deputy commissioner 1, Kamaruzaman Mohamad, for the planned overnight rally slated for Aug 29 and Aug 30, reported Bernama .

Hadi ( photo ) explained that this is because the party would have its own gathering later.

However, the PAS president said the party would not prevent any members from participating in the rally.

Nevertheless, there is also no encouragement for them to join the rally as PAS was not a co-organiser this time around, unlike the previous Bersih rallies, he said.

Call for Najib's resignation

The mammoth protest is to demand for free and fair elections, and a clean government. It also calls for the right to protest, the strengthening of parliamentary democracy and to save the Malaysian economy.

The rallies, to be held in three cities, will also call for Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's resignation plus institutional reforms to prevent prime ministerial corruption.

The police, on the other hand, have warned organiser , polls watchdog Bersih not to "overthrow the government" in its coming rally, lest they will face action by the police.

Meanwhile, on another matter, Hadi described the move by small groups of party members throughout the country announcing their resignations from the party as a cleansing process for PAS.

He said he was not disturbed by the development as it was something good for the party, and in fact stressed that PAS had received more applications for membership from many individuals.

"That (resignations of party members) is a cleansing of the party that happens naturally.

"We are not worried... we are happy... our membership is increasing, within the past one month, we have received 4,000 new members who have been registered, and there are still 2,000 to 3,000 applications for membership which have yet to be processed," he told reporters at the Aidilfitri gathering organised by Terengganu PAS yesterday.