COMMENT Not as weighty perhaps as the 1MDB debate, yet critical to the resolution of issues of national import is the contention between the participants in the PAS debate over the party’s future.

While the off-on-off again 1MDB debate between Tony Pua of DAP and Arul Kanda Kandasamy of the state wealth fund is tied up in pre-match technicalities, the contestation in PAS is free of such encumbrances.

And what’s more, issues within its ambit are susceptible to monosyllabic resolutions, a welcome change from the convolutions of 1MDB that render the subject opaque.

A simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ reply was what Husam Musa, a protagonist in the PAS debate, said was required of his target, party president Abdul Hadi Awang, to the question the former party veep framed:

“Did you or did you not admit to attempting to form a coalition government with Umno in Selangor last year?”

Essentially what Husam was pressing Hadi for was a response at this stage of to-and-fro between them on what is a battle for the soul of the Islamic party.

Never mind that this argument should have taken place before the PAS polls in June which eventuated in the wipeout of the progressives of the party, among whom Husam is a leading light.

But the star performer in the Kelantan executive council composed under the menteri besar-ship of the late Nik Aziz Nik Mat (1990-2013) chose to stay back in PAS while his progressive compatriots went on to form the splinter, Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah).

How the conservative ulama, victors in the party polls, must wish that Husam had left with the rest of the progressive cohort because now he is directing a stream of fire at them, particularly Hadi, for what he is says is conduct wholly at odds with decisions made by its highest legislative body - the muktamar, which is its annual assembly.

Hadi’s disregard for decisions made at the muktamar is the nub of Husam’s criticisms aimed at the president.

Hadi has not responded to the salvoes hurled at him but his surrogates in the party have: they accuse Husam of joining a retinue of critics, ranging from DAP, Amanah and Umno, in lambasting the party.

‘Hapless target of critics’

Significantly, the respondents have not dealt with the substance of Husam’s diatribe, preferring instead to portray the party as the hapless target of carping critics with ignoble motives.

One motive that they attribute to Husam is disappointment at not being chosen as menteri besar when Nik Aziz retired as MB after the general election in May, 2013.

Ascribing motives cannot substitute for argument which is why the failure of Hadi’s defenders to respond substantively to Husam’s criticisms will give added impetus to Hadi’s critics within and without PAS.

Even those in the party who are aligned to Hadi frowned at Hadi’s recently announced intention to collaborate with Perkasa, the right-wing Malay group scorned by all sectors of the opposition, including PAS, which is apt to look askance at the parochialism of the causes the group espouses.

The Selangor wing of PAS wasted no time in disavowing any intention to collaborate with Perkasa after Hadi was seen embracing Perkasa chief Ibrahim Ali, a politician many oppositionists would not like to touch even with a barge pole.

Hadi is felt to have shot himself in the foot by indicating that there would be cooperation between PAS and Perkasa on issues of mutual concern such as opposition to the trade pact, Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and misuse of the anti-terrorism law, Sosma, even though concern over these issues is widely shared among oppositionists.

Clearly, Husam’s strategy is to let Hadi’s self-inflicted injuries undermine him within PAS, citing the growing urgings for PAS to be led by leaders unencumbered by the taint of a connection to Umno.

Umno is seen as weighed down by the toxicity of 1MDB and attempts by PAS leaders to forge links with Umno is viewed as trying to revive a fatally flawed party.

Husam has suggested that party deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, who is at pains to prefer distance to dalliance with Umno, is more suitable for the task of leading PAS.

Suffice that Husam’s strictures have ignited a debate in PAS and even if he is seen as a lone and forlorn voice of dissent, still his stature as one of the leading lights in the state administrations of the revered Nik Aziz will keep the torch of the progressives alight in the Islamic party even as most of its bearers have crossed over to Amanah.

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.

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