INTERVIEW | Wan Saiful Wan Jan may have just joined Bersatu, but the former PAS member admits that experience in the Islamist party shaped him into what he is today.

"If you expect me to say negative things about PAS as a party, I don't think that will happen.

"I have comments about the current leadership, but I don't have negative thoughts about PAS," Wan Saiful tells Malaysiakini, saying that he credits PAS for moulding him into a critical thinker.

"It was the PAS training programmes that made me believe that if you want to do something, make sure it's the right thing to do, and just do it," he adds.

Read more: Wan Saiful - from Bangsar regular to reform advocate at night markets

Before joining Bersatu, the former CEO of the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) thinktank had been a PAS member for almost 21 years, joining the party in September 1997.

But his affair with PAS stretches back even further, getting to know the party when he headed the religious bureau in Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah, then located in Kuala Lumpur.

At an English language programme he participated in before continuing his studies in the UK, Wan Saiful recalls being approached by a PAS member who asked to set up usrah(intellectual discourse) programmes for students in the country.

"That got me more involved with the Youth wing. When I went to the UK, I became involved with the official platform of PAS in the UK.

"I was head of the A-level student group, I rose up through the hierarchy, became head of information, and even became chairperson of its Syura Council.

“I represented PAS in various meetings in the UK, trying to expand the influence of the PAS student movement at the time," he says.

Having lived in the UK from 1993 to 2009, Wan Saiful never held a position in PAS in Malaysia, however.

"The reason I came back to Malaysia was not to be part of PAS, it was to set up Ideas. That's why I have never been active in PAS in Malaysia, it was only while I was in the UK."

The conservative faction

Despite his long association with PAS, Wan Saiful said he never identified with its conservative faction, and had always seen the party as being composed of two camps.

This is why Wan Saiful was neither sad nor surprised when the fissure between the conservatives and progressives came to a head in 2015.

 "I was sending WhatsApp messages saying 'I told you so', I was already expecting that. I really don't see how they can reconcile their different belief systems.

"It's like talking about the possibility of Republican and Democrats merging together simply because they are Americans. It doesn't work like that, they are really different schools of thought."

Wan Saiful cites a discussion he had over ten years ago in a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, with PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang, Syed Azman Syed Ahmad Nawawi, and now Amanah leader Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, where he told them how PAS' origins had always been conservative.

"I said to them, the conservatives will always have a home in the party and in the country, but the progressives come from different backgrounds, and they don't really belong in PAS, they were allowed to come in.

"I said – I had assumed all three of them were from the progressive side – if you do not leave the party now, you will be kicked out.

“Little did I know that Hadi would be kicking them (the progressives) out, but that was the conversation I had.

"I never believed the progressive faction would have a place in PAS," he says, adding that they were essentially “guests” in the party.

Progressive ‘poster boys’

Wan Saiful also describes the PAS progressives as "poster boys" wheeled out for select audiences to project a more moderate image.

"Whenever PAS needed to engage with non-Malays and non-Muslims, they would send the progressives, but the decision making was for the conservatives.

"When you are trying to combine these two schools of thought together, it just simply does not work, it has never worked in any Muslim country, so I'm not surprised PAS split up, because that's how it should be.

"I'm glad with the presence of Amanah, because that's how it should be."

Wan Saiful is also of the opinion that there should always be contestation of ideas, as that is how society progresses.

"The split of PAS was a good thing. Politically, of course, it was a horrible situation for Pakatan Rakyat, but it was good for the growth of the dynamic debate of ideas,” he says.

The progressive faction was wiped out in the 2015 PAS muktamar.

Amanah was formed by progressive leaders after PAS severed ties with DAP, which brought an end to the Pakatan coalition.