COMMENT An audible sigh of relief must have been felt in opposition precincts when PKR deputy president and Selangor Menteri Besar Azmin Ali did not show up at the massive PAS gathering in Kota Baru yesterday.

The billing featured him as one of the event’s speakers but when he did not appear at the football stadium in the Kelantan capital where the event was staged, PAS secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan helpfully attributed Azmin’s absence to a missed flight or other exigencies.

Azmin deserved the sufferance: in his turn, he has been extraordinarily understanding of PAS to the extent that he is a holdout to the opposition-other-than-PAS-consensus that the Islamists, insistent on their form of political lone ranger-ism, must be allowed to be the outlier they adamantly want to be.

An estimated 60,000 crowd at the stadium yesterday must have given the party’s guiding lights sustenance for their insistence that they must go it alone.

However, there are limits to their lone ranger-ism. Takiyuddin said PAS will back a no-confidence motion that opposition leader Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail plans to move in Parliament when its Budget session begins from tomorrow.

Observers would have noted that the word of PAS’ stand on the motion comes from the sec-gen of the party and not from the president, Abdul Hadi Awang, or spiritual leader, Dr Haron Din.

The two have been in public pronouncements several weeks back rather benign towards Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and his difficulties with the 1MDB.

Since the time the PAS pair exhaled exculpatory vibes towards the Umno supremo, the news about 1MDB has gone steadily worse such that it would be decidedly perilous for a party of Islamist moorings like PAS to seem too excusing of the failures of the PM.

Takiyuddin’s disclosure that PAS would back the no-confidence motion against Najib must be seen in this light, although it would have been more credible if the announcement had been made by Hadi or Haron.

Had it come from the top two, the announcement would have entailed a recantation by the pair of their earlier excuses for Najib and realistic deference to public opinion which latest surveys show as running strongly against the PM.

No serious political party can hope to garner support - regardless ot its ability to call up large numbers of its base in displays of mass support as PAS demonstrated yesterday - through willful disregard of public opinion.

Likewise no credible opposition leader like Azmin can hope to endure if he does not defer to popular opinion on issues of vital interest to its supporters.

Startled about ‘collaboration’ with Perkasa

Opposition supporters were startled earlier this week to find that PAS had signalled its intent to ‘collaborate’ with Malay rights pressure group Perkasa on issues like the misuse of the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).

Though Sosma and TPPA are generally opposed by opposition parties, the latter tend to be leery of any cooperation with Perkasa given its track record of rabid expousal of sectarian issues.

Perkasa is anathema to the opposition. The news that PAS is wanting to cooperate with a divisive NGO with a racist reputation came as another rude surprise from a quarter recently given to startling turns in its usual stances and policies.

PAS may find Perkasa a newly-expedient ally perhaps because of the support it is haemorrhaging to Parti Amanah Negara, a splinter that arose from the convulsions the party went through in the lead-up to its divisive polls in June.

Just as Azmin ( photo ) finds it expedient to cut PAS as much slack as he thinks would help keep it in the opposition, so PAS finds it convenient to dally with Perkasa to stem the loss of support to Amanah.

But such calculations must be weighed against their potential to undermine core interests: in Azmin’s case, his standing as a credible opposition leader of a multi-racial party; and in PAS’s instance, its stature as an Islamic party with non-parochial ideals.

By his absence at the PAS gathering yesterday, Azmin has prevented his copybook from being blotted with associations that right now are self-destructive.

It’s all right to feel grateful to PAS for the help it gave him to become Selangor menteri besar 13 months ago, but he should not leverage gratitude above self-preservation as a credible leader of a multi-racial political entity.

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.