COMMENT It's not exactly a search as puzzling as the one on the missing flight, but it did trigger an avid hunt for the multiracial opposition party PAS that intends to sign a pact with next week in preparation for the coming general election, GE14.

On March 16, PAS will tie up with a multiracial opposition party with whom it will contest GE14. This, the party said, will open up a new front in the opposition ranks to battle the ruling Umno-BN.

Party secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan did not reveal the identity of the party with whom PAS will make common electoral cause, thus setting off a speculative frenzy in the press.

Apart from Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) and Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM), there really is no multiracial opposition party worth the name that PAS could link up with, unless one considers Parti Cinta Malaysia - though the latter has been a nebulous entity.

Although multiracial in membership, the socialist ideologies of PSM and PRM is anathema to PAS and would rule them out as electoral allies.

One has only to recall the episode on the eve of GE13, when the supposed worldliness and secularism of PSM president Dr Nasir Hashim caused PAS chief Abdul Hadi Awang to field a PAS candidate in the Kota Damansara state seat of Selangor - a decision that led to a three-cornered fight there, thus enabling Umno to win it away from incumbent Nasir.

With that acrimony as background, PSM and PAS cannot possibly get together.

Likewise PAS and PRM, though there is no comparable story of aversion between them.

Bad blood

As for Parti Cinta Malaysia, it's too trifling a presence though its penchant for being a thorn in DAP's side should commend it to PAS, given the bad blood between the Islamist party and its secular ally in the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat.

This leaves the question of a PAS electoral tie-up with a party in Sarawak open for speculative exploration.

After all, the Sarawak state elections is expected next month, if Chief Minister Adenan Satem's calculations of a suitable time for the polls are anything to go by.

There are two splinter parties in Sarawak that could conceivably be viewed as multiracial and in the opposition, though both very much want to join BN and would have been accepted - except that their applications would have been vetoed by the mother party in the ruling coalition.

BN has a rule that new applicants can only join by consensual agreement of existing members.

The United People's Party (UPP) split from Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP) and Parti Tenaga Rakyat (Teras) broke away from Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP). SUPP and SPDP are members of the ruling state BN.

Adenan has nurtured a delicate formula to accommodate supposedly strong candidates from the splinter parties in the coming state polls, but it is an arrangement that could unravel and leave the left-out disgruntled.

Could one or the other of the two splinter parties be the rumoured ally of PAS - which is said to be eyeing its first electoral gains in Sarawak at the upcoming polls and would view a tie-up with a local party as advantageous to securing that first-ever win?

None of the Sarawak political parties are comfortable with PAS' theocratic politics, so it difficult to countenance the possibility of an electoral pact between one of them and the peninsula Islamist party.

Furthermore, the hudud ideology which PAS is determined to apply to Kelantan is a no-no to all Sarawak parties.

So, which is the multiracial opposition party that is willing to chance its fortunes with PAS at the polls?

The disclosure that PAS wants to be combat-ready for GE14 is itself something of a surprise, given what Hadi has been saying these days about the whole new purpose of its politics.

Among several head-twirling pronouncements, Hadi has let it be known PAS is not really interested in winning elections; he said it prefers advising rival Umno about how to govern in an Islamic way.

Has Hadi got it all together?

The stuff that has emanated from Hadi in the last several months have been startling enough to prompt speculation on whether the man has got it all together - or perhaps his ill-health of recent times has got to him.

So unhinging have Hadi's bloviations been that party loyalist and sometime luminary Husam Musa has suggested that deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man take over the leadership.

A takeover is not going to take place, however, so what secretary-general Takiyuddin announced yesterday may reflect the PAS leadership's awareness that they have been emitting confusing signals.

An addled public - not to mention a patient and passive membership - have watched this confused state of affairs persist for some time, and must be wondering what is going on.

Perhaps the announcement that PAS intends to combine electorally with a multiracial opposition party in the lead-up to GE14 is an attempt to stay relevant after the confounding gyrations of its president.

At least, with the announcement, a party that seems to be careening into irrelevance has made a play for the public's reckoning.

At this stage, public anticipation of a PAS manoeuvre may be deemed as good for the party.

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.