COMMENT Credit to a Selangor PAS executive council member for providing a reality check on claims by Umno president Najib Abdul Razak on the mushrooming cooperation between the Malay nationalist party and its perennial Islamist rival PAS.

Iskandar Abdul Samad said the embattled Umno supremo is “daydreaming” if he thinks that a crisis-ridden party such as Najib leads could use PAS as a smokescreen to divert attention from the problems plaguing it.

Employing the hyperbole that is par for the course in rhetorical exchanges between rival political parties, Iskandar said, “The whole world heard Umno deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin’s speech last night. It is clear Umno is facing a serious internal crisis similar to those in 1988 and 1998.”

Iskandar did not limit himself to a blunt portrayal of Umno’s internal ructions; he went on to narrate a litany of what he called - in suitably theological terms - “sins” that the party had committed against PAS members.

The specific nature of these transgressions, if true, is enough to justify the criticism that those who talk of encouraging signs of Umno-PAS collaboration are indeed daydreaming.

The Iskandar litany of Umno’s “sins” against PAS reads:

“PAS members or their families were denied allocations or aid which they were supposed to receive as citizens of this nation.

“Civil servants supportive of PAS are warned, threatened or transferred. Traders who back PAS have their stalls torn down.

“PAS activists are detained and some have died as a result of this.”

This narrative of rights deprivation, voter intimidation, trade infringement, unjust detention, and even custodial deaths, allegedly inflicted on PAS members and supporters, could not have been of recent vintage. Their inventory must have been compiled over a some period of time.

This inevitably raises the question that if these “sins” are true, why have good vibes about Umno been emitted by the top leadership of PAS throughout this year.

Have party president Abdul Hadi Awang and spiritual leader Dr Haron Din been deliberately amnesiac or oblivious of the transgressions enumerated by Iskander when both leaders, at specific times of Najib’s highly-publicised travails over a slew of national issues besetting the PM, gave voice to statements of support for the embattled premier?

There seems to a disjunct here, between the straitened circumstances of PAS members on the ground when faced with Umno’s lower echelon powerbrokers and the benign experiences of the top duo in PAS vis-a-vis their counterparts in Umno.

This apparent disjunction is not really surprising when the statements of party president Hadi are taken into account.

‘Disconnected from reality’

Practically throughout the crisis last year arising from PKR’s attempt to replace Khalid Ibrahim as menteri besar of Selangor and continuing into this year, Hadi has given vent to statements that portrayed him as disconnected from reality.

Hadi’s remarks that repudiated decisions that were reached at the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat central leadership council meetings, his opinions that seemed to hanker after some sort of cooperation with Umno, and statements that cast local council elections as a move that invites a repeat of the May 13 race riots - all contributed to the public image of a leader somewhat unhinged.

The astonishment continued this year when Hadi said PAS would cooperate with the right-wing Malay rights pressure group Perkasa on certain common concerns of both parties, a move that a prompt demurral from Iskandar on the grounds that Perkasa was divisive and parochial entity, best kept at bay for the health of the universalist ideals of PAS.

The wonder is that this seemingly erratic posturing by the party president drew only faint demurrals from other leaders within the PAS fold, never outright repudiation.

Until now, of course, when a former vice-president, Husam Musa, has begun the arduous task of calling Hadi to account for unilateralist decision making and, even, deviations from consensual decisions made at the party’s annual muktamar, bearing in mind that the latter is the highest decision-making body of the party.

Husam himself has been called to account for his public criticism of the PAS state government in Kelantan and of Hadi.

He has responded with a delineation considerably more detailed than Iskandar’s narrative of Umno “sins” against PAS in Selangor.

After that detailing, Husam, in accordance with the politesse of Malay political discourse, has withdrawn to allow for collective rumination.

The wheels of deliberation and dissent in PAS do churn, albeit slowly. Better slow than never.

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.