The Malaysian Insight

THE Pakatan Harapan presidential council will meet tonight amid internal strife in component party PKR over its plans to cooperate with estranged ally PAS in the 14th general election.

The meeting has been brought forward after PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli pressured his party to hold a special congress to seek views from party members on negotiating with PAS.

Sources in the PH leadership said the coalition as a whole did not usually interfere in component parties’ internal affairs, but that the issue would likely be raised.

“The issue may be discussed informally, but it is not part of the agenda tonight,” one source told The Malaysian Insight.

“The meeting (tonight) is on seat negotiations, reports by the election committees and manifesto committees,” another member of the leadership said.

Also on the agenda, he said, are the appointments of state PH leaders, as well as extending offers to Sabah and Sarawak opposition parties to join the pact.

The source concurred, however, that PKR’s overtures to PAS would be discussed, following a chain of rapid developments in recent days that have thrown the differences of opinion within the party into sharper focus.

It will be hard to avoid the thorny subject of PKR’s desire to work with the Islamist party after PH chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday the coalition’s leadership would discuss it tonight. The Bersatu chairman, however, declined to comment whether he agreed with PKR’s move.

Yesterday, Rafizi said a special congress should be formed immediately to resolve once and for all the relationship between PAS and the Selangor government. He also revealed the PKR leaders in favour and against working with PAS.

Today, PKR deputy president Azmin Ali said there was no need to hold a special congress and questioned Rafizi for revealing an internal party matter to the media.

He said calling for a special congress was merely Rafizi’s personal view.

“Any organisation will have differing opinions. However, good leadership means having the wisdom and discipline to manage these opinions without revealing anything to the media.

“The leadership was chosen by the grassroots, so we must give the leadership the mandate,” he was quoted as saying.

Earlier today, a group of PKR grassroot leaders announced at a press conference that they were in favour of a special congress to discuss the PAS issue, as the “mixed signals” from the top had left them confused.

Committee chairman Yusuf Tapar said 73 out of 218 PKR divisions had to support the push for the special congress, and 56 divisions were in favour.

Earlier today, PKR Youth deputy chief Dr Afif Bahardin also said it was unnecessary and even absurd to hold a special congress to discuss the decision to negotiate with PAS.

Afif said Rafizi’s claim that the decision to engage PAS in talks was a call by a faction led by Azmin was “wildly inaccurate”.

“The decision to negotiate was a collective decision of the PKR political bureau chaired by party president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. This effort is also endorsed by Anwar (Ibrahim).

“Contrary to the insinuations and deliberate ambiguities in Rafizi’s statement, there is no intention whatsoever to include PAS in the Pakatan Harapan coalition.

“The negotiations are solely to prevent three-cornered contests in the general election, and to increase the chances of victory for PKR and the opposition parties,” he said in a statement today.

He said Rafizi should have suggested to party secretary-general Saifudin Nasution Ismail to call for a routine central leadership council meeting, which has not convened since May 19.

Last Monday, Selayang MP William Leong resigned from PKR’s political bureau in protest against his party leadership’s stance of continuing to court PAS into forming an electoral pact. 

The PKR supreme leadership council member said he did not agree with his party cooperating with PAS when it was clear that the Islamist party already had an arrangement with Umno. – August 28, 2017.