COMMENT Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s speculation on the reasons that will propel Umno and PAS to some form of cooperation underscores Charles de Gaulle’s dictum on the permanence of political interests over the variability of political friendships.

The Umno MP for Gua Musang has got it right: Umno and PAS, given the slumping state of their appeal to the Malaysian electorate, need to come to some electoral understanding to avoid doing poorly in the next general election (GE14), due 2018.

If an electoral understanding between them is the PAS quid for the pro quo of Umno’s support for hudud imposition in Kelantan, it will be imperative for the rest of the federal opposition to opt for a counterbalance to this Umno-PAS tie-up.

Where to look for this counterbalance?

To Sarawak where the imposition of hudud anywhere on the peninsula would be regarded as a red flag of confirmation of their worst fears over forming Malaysia 52 years ago, together with Malaya and Sabah.

This is not so much because Sarawak is a majority Christian territory as it is a place whose people view the secularity of the state as the pre-condition ideal for the peaceful co-existence of its diverse ethnicities and religions.

Sarawakians are happily free of the hangups that peninsular Malay/Muslims feel about a secular state and what the term ‘secularism’ has come to connote in western countries.

For that reason, Sarawakians would be apt to see the imposition of hudud in Kelantan in the same way that Christians and other non-Muslims in northern Sumatra view the imposition of Shariah law in Aceh - with great trepidation and no small sense of betrayal.

In the event of an Umno-PAS pact, it behooves the federal opposition - which except for PAS sees hudud as an unwarranted distraction from its goal of wide ranging political and economic reform - to move in a direction that would counterbalance the emergence of the threat to democratic pluralism that Shariah, of which hudud is an integral part, represents.

Democratic pluralism more nearly describes the policies of the Sarawak state government of Chief Minister Adenan Satem than it does the policies and practices of the federal BN coalition of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, which is now unembarrassed about aspiring to create, with PAS’ help, the “perfect” Islamic society, after its presumable failure to realise the “best democracy” for Malaysia.

Cliches drip from Najib’s government with the same ease as unrealistic advice from its ministers to a tax-burdened and income-stagnant workforce to seek second jobs to cope with rising living costs.

No such buffoonery from the government of CM Adenan.

True, his government has banned from entering Sarawak social and political activists from the peninsula.

Blemishes shouldn’t distract from overall merits

No doubt these actions sully its overall track record in the nearly two years the CM has been in charge. But these blemishes should not distract from its overall merits.

The merits are compelling, particularly when seen against their void among the federals.

The decision to make English an official language - in recognition of its salience as a global linguistic currency - is only the latest among a raft of of sensible policies by the Adenan administration.

Others include recognition for the Chinese language university-entrance qualification, United Examinations Certificate; the omission of any reference to Sarawak having an official religion - a boost to the secularity of its governance; and a push for equal mention of the contributions to the nation’s development by historical figures from minority races.

These policies and acts bolster the state government’s credentials as support-worthy tribunes of a more equitable political order.

With a deal in the works between an increasingly repressive and reactionary Umno and a PAS lurching towards religious obscurantism, the forces for democratic pluralism in the federal opposition must think of new alignments as potential counterweight to a nascent Umno-PAS combo.

The DAP should take the lead in initiating the moves that would make this counterweight a reality, rather than wait for more more developments on the Umno-PAS front to take place.

The DAP should not wait for consensus among its partners, PKR and Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah), in the newly formed Pakatan Harapan before moving to make common cause with Sarawakian political forces.

PKR is enmeshed in factionalism, besides having already opted for an opaque and insensible arrangement with PAS, while Amanah will find it difficult to ally with forces in Sarawak whose soundings would inevitably be anti-hudud.

Hence DAP must move, in all likelihood, alone and preemptively to counterbalance an Islamist combination in the form of an Umno-PAS deal.

The realignments in Malaysian politics that DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang spoke of earlier this year, in the immediate aftermath of the break-up of Pakatan Rakyat, was not idle talk; it was prescient in its anticipation of what was incubating on the Islamist front.

In sum, the forces for democratic pluralism must think and act anew. That mostly means an realignment of these forces.

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.