COMMENT It’s good that Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) MP Khalid Samad has asked PAS to clarify its stance vis-a-vis the BN: Is PAS for or against the ruling coalition?

It’s not as if the Islamist party is likely to give a clear answer to the query.

For these days, PAS revels in ambiguity, taking particular delight in taunting its former allies in the opposition.

One cannot expect a clear line of reasoning from party president Abdul Hadi Awang; he’s all over the place, and what’s more, relishes the role of keeping everyone guessing about where his party stands.

A steadier line of explanation and reasoning emanates from party deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, but he is not the final word on policy matters.

Secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan ( photo ) tries to tread a steady line but he is a functionary, not a formulator of policy.

Hence observers have to rely on the party president to do all the running when it comes to devising policy and stating positions.

And what a dizzying course that has been for almost two years now when observers have had to figure out what the PAS position actually is from what the party president says it is.

The party’s internal polls in June offered some relief for this confusion in that it led to a cut in ties to its former Pakatan Rakyat coalition partner, DAP, and to the departure of a faction within PAS that formed newfangled Amanah.

That should have clarified matters but for the fact that another former partner in Pakatan Rakyat, PKR, insisted on keeping links to PAS intact, regardless that severance of ties between PAS and DAP had rendered Pakatan Rakyat comatose; PKR’s pretence that its undisturbed relationship with PAS could continue unaffected was unsustainable.

As Amanah took off and became a going concern, PAS insisted on reiterating its revulsion towards DAP and excoriated Amanah as “traitors”.

As it is, talk is difficult when former partners split. But when matters are suffused by recrimination, as between DAP and PAS, and then PAS and Amanah, even the hope of an agreement on minimal bases evaporates.

Shah Alam MP Khalid of Amanah zeroed in on that minimal base by framing the question in this way to PAS - is the party for or against BN?

He posed it immediately after Hadi Awang had given another of his demonstrations of alternating between wanting to collaborate with BN and distancing PAS from it.

Zigzag a regular feature

This zigzag has been so regular a feature of Hadi's deportment in the last two years that one does not wait any longer for the less unsteady Tuan Ibrahim or Takiyuddin to come out with a clarifying rejoinder because that would only call forth a countermand by Hadi further down the road.

Suffice it is to say that PAS has a strange way of going about the task of formulating and propounding its stances, but the rest of the opposition cannot be dragged helter skelter as a result of the ensuing confusion about where the Islamic party stood in the order of things.

Hence Khalid’s ( photo ) terse query: Is PAS with BN or against it?: must be seen as a reasonable demand for a clarifying finality.

It has to be posed even if no answer is given or if the answer has already been given in Hadi’s latest musings on the issue wherein he wavered between wanting collaboration with Umno on some issues and cooperation with parts of the opposition on others.

He was saying that PAS does not need others, but others need the party.

This is a go-it-alone policy that smacks of politcal solipsism and arrogance.

When seen against the party’s performance in the history of elections in Malaysia, it’s irrational because PAS has not done as well than when it has cooperated with other parties in the opposition.

On its own, it has been a regional party, with sizeable support in the states of Kelantan, in particular, and to a lesser extent in Terengganu and Kedah.

Elsewhere on the peninsula it has done well only in concert with partners in the opposition.

Dismaying as this is, it’s time the rest of the opposition, now plying their trade as Pakatan Harapan, accept PAS for what Hadi pronounces it to be and prepare for the next general election without the party as a partner.

More clarity and less confusion that way.

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.