Uphill task for Pakatan to maintain support as ideologies clash, leaders hauled up

In our continuing series to mark the anniversary of the most heated general election in recent memory, we examine the state of the main federal opposition Pakatan Rakyat.

Malaysia’s multi-racial fabric may be fraying and its institutions rotting due to what some say is the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration’s misrule since May 5 last year.

But observers and analysts feel that as things stand now, there is little chance that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) can offer a viable alternative for the public to resolve the problems afflicting Malaysia.

This is because there is fear the coalition is collapsing under the weight of its members’ competing ideologies.

The hudud issue effectively questions whether PR is up to governing Malaysia in all its pluralistic complexity as long as one partner, PAS, sticks to its guns to impose the Islamic criminal law.

This comes just as PR loses more and more of its leading lights, the latest being DAP national chairman Karpal Singh, who died in a road accident last month.

With the coalition bracing itself for the imprisonment of opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, many wonder if it can still hold together.

A two-month water crisis in Selangor also threatens to tarnish PR’s carefully-built image of the state administration as a role model of how the coalition can govern better than the BN.

“Pakatan Rakyat has largely lost its plot as a government-in-waiting at the national level although individual states are pretty well-run,” said political analyst Dr Wong Chin Huat of the Penang Institute. 

Observers, including former Federal Territory PAS chief Subky Abdul Latif, however, feel that a break-up is not necessarily imminent even as PAS and DAP feud openly over hudud in Kelantan. 

“DAP is outraged but at this time, DAP is not PAS’s enemy and PAS is not DAP’s enemy...

“Umno can support hudud but Umno is still PAS’s enemy. PAS and DAP can fight for a bit but the enemy of both is Umno,” wrote Subky in his column on The Malaysian Insider.

Umno and PAS are locked in a historical battle over who gets to represent Malay Muslims with both parties almost always facing each other in electoral contests.

But if a fallout does happen between PAS and DAP, it is not the first time. Despite breaking up in the past, both still managed to cooperate during an election.

In 2001, the DAP left Barisan Alternatif, the precursor to PR, after it felt it could not be in the same coalition with PAS with its Islamic state agenda.

But PAS, DAP and PKR still managed to form an electoral pact in 2004 and 2008, and avoided clashing with each other to take the BN in one-to-one fights, which succeeded in breaking the ruling coalition's traditional two-thirds parliamentary majority.

Just as the friction threatens to get worse, Anwar is getting ready for prison again, following the conviction on sodomy.

PKR is also bracing to lose its other stars, such as its strategy director Rafizi Ramli, who faces court cases related to the national feedlot scandal which he exposed. Rafizi has been crucial to the party and PR’s continuing campaign to expose graft and wastage in government spending.

DAP's Seputeh MP Teresa Kok, meanwhile, has been charged under the Sedition Act for supposedly insulting Muslims and the nation’s leaders.

She is the second DAP leader to face a sedition charge in recent times, the first being the late Karpal, who was convicted in February. For years before his untimely death, the Bukit Gelugor MP was behind much of the ideological weight of the DAP.

Some newer opposition activists were pained at the 73-year-old’s vocal criticism of PAS and its Islamisation agenda, others felt that Karpal had constantly reminded Pakatan of its commitment to upholding the principles of the Federal Constitution.

Sources in PR said Anwar’s ability as a negotiator had been instrumental in bridging the differences between PAS, DAP and PKR.

Without Anwar around, they fear it would more difficult to reach compromises on things such as seat allocations and common manifestos.

Anwar has been the only leader the PR partners can more-or-less agree as the coalition's prime ministerial candidate should they secure federal power.

However, UiTM's political analyst Dr Shaharuddin Badaruddin, questioned Anwar’s real standing in PR.

He said putting too much faith in Anwar ignores the fact that he had been absent when PKR, PAS and DAP cooperated under Barisan Alternatif during the 1999 general election.

“PKR itself grew up when Anwar was not around. The PKR now is not the PKR which was formed when Anwar went to jail in 1999,” Shaharuddin, of UiTM’s administrative science and policy studies faculty, said.

He said the glue holding PR together were middle-ranking DAP, PKR and PAS members.

“This generation of new leaders have come up in the past 15 years. They hold important posts in their respective parties and are used to working together, with or without Anwar.

“They’ve drafted common manifestos together, they have campaigned together and they hold state functions and programmes together. This is what really holds Pakatan together,” he said.

A challenge that PR would have to deal with together is the water crisis and the damage it inflicted on the Selangor government’s image of efficiency.

The two-month water rationing exercise which affected some six million consumers was triggered by a dry spell that forced treatment plants to start drawing raw water from the state’s dams.

Although it was ended on May 1, PR’s ability to manage this resource will again be tested during an even longer dry season from June to October.

Wong of the Penang Institute, however, said PR could get an unintended boost from the public anger generated by the jailing of Anwar and other Pakatan leaders.

“In the short run, the anger should strengthen Pakatan. However, if the hudud deadlock turns enough non-Muslims away from Pakatan, then you will not see a Reformasi 2.0 in full force,” said Wong, referring to the campaign recently launched by PKR.

UiTM’s Shaharuddin also believed that another Anwar jail term could create a new generation of voters who are turned off by a politically motivated charge.

The perception that Anwar was unjustly imprisoned could fuse with the pain felt by rising living costs and drive more people to support PR.

However, the wave of support also depends on whether PR can get over hudud and offer a unified vision of a Malaysia that all Malaysians can be part of.

But as it stands now, it will be tough for PR to maintain or improve its electoral performance in the next general election. - TMI