GE14 | A large PAS flag, hoisted high on a wooden pole, flutters outside a house in Taman Desa, Muar, billowed by winds from a coming rainstorm.

At the porch drumming his fingers on the arm of a wooden chair, is Johor PAS veteran Dr Sheikh Ibrahim Salleh.

Life had been good for Sheikh Ibrahim, who together with fellow PAS doctor Mohammad Taslim, had their string of defeats in the 1999 and 2004 general elections turned into victories when they won the neighbouring Sungai Abong and Maharani state seats, respectively, in both the 2008 and 2013 elections.

But when Malaysiakini met with Sheikh Ibrahim on the evening of March 3, his prognosis for the Islamist party in Johor was as bleak as the grey skies that day...