With Pakatan dead, it’s time for PKR to reaffirm its ideology

Malaysia’s three-party opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition, once seen as well placed to end Barisan Nasional’s (BN) long-running rule of the country, is officially dead.

On Tuesday, Mr Lim Eng Guan, secretary-general of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), announced that PR had ceased to exist, after its former ally, the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) adopted a motion at its recent general assembly to sever ties with the DAP.

Both parties have been openly hostile to each other over the Islamist party’s push to enforce Islamic criminal law — or hudud — in Kelantan, with DAP insisting that the issue is not part of the three parties’ common policy framework, and accusing PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang of betraying the pact.

Confirmation that the seven-year-old alliance is no more came a day later, from Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, president of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) — the linchpin party of PR. The three parties had formed the pact in 2008 after Malaysia’s 12th general election, and its winning of the popular vote in the 2013 election prompted some to believe that it could go on to break BN’s long hold on power.

Although PAS and DAP no longer see eye to eye, both parties want to sustain cooperation with PKR. With the future of Malaysian opposition uncertain, it is also time for PKR to clarify what the party stands for: Is it for secularism or an Islamic state?

Since some PKR leaders do not deny hudud as God’s laws, they should spell out how the laws can be implemented in Malaysia.

PR’S DEMISE

A series of events starting last year triggered the split in PR. The first was the failed “Kajang move”, which aimed to have Anwar Ibrahim, the de facto PR leader, elected as an assemblyman in the Selangor district of Kajang before he was made the state’s Chief Minister as part of his larger plan to take over Putrajaya.

But Anwar was disqualified from contesting the seat after he was convicted of sodomy and his wife, Dr Wan Azizah, ran for the seat and won. Dr Wan Azizah’s victory gave rise to another controversy: Finding a candidate for the Selangor Chief Minister post to replace incumbent Khalid Ibrahim.

PAS disagreed with PKR’s and DAP’s decision to name Dr Wan Azizah as Mr Khalid’s replacement, and the saga ended with the appointment of PKR’s Azmin Ali as the new Chief Minister, with the Sultan’s assent.

The second trigger for PR’s demise was its loss of two influential leaders within a matter of days in January. First, the Malaysian Federal Court rejected Anwar’s sodomy appeal and upheld the five-year jail sentence. Anwar, 67, was the symbol of PR’s struggle to end the BN dominance, and a unifying figure for the opposition.

With his jail term plus a mandatory five-year prohibition on running for office, the political career of the opposition’s best candidate as Prime Minister is over. No one else in the opposition parties is seen as a viable candidate to run for the country’s top job.

Then, three days after Anwar’s sentencing, PAS spiritual leader, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, passed away at the age of 84. Although Nik Aziz had been uncompromising on the need for hudud laws in Malaysia, he did not injudiciously push the agenda at the federal Parliament, knowing it would only hurt ties with DAP.

Conversely, Mr Hadi, the PAS president, has pushed for a private members Bill in federal Parliament for hudud. This came after the Kelantan Legislative Assembly, led by PAS, amended the Syariah Criminal Code in March, paving the way for hudud to be enforced in the state.

Both Nik Aziz and Anwar had been instrumental in keeping the PR coalition together. The writing was on the wall for PR once it lost the two men.

PR’s lack of an ideological ambiguity has also been badly exposed. DAP’s absolute rejection of hudud in Malaysia and PAS’s insistence on the punitive Islamic laws clearly show that the pact was a “marriage of convenience”.

To be sure, many governments in the world consist of coalition of political parties that uphold different ideologies, and not all have failed. The Israeli Knesset (Parliament), the Indonesian Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (legislative assembly) and Britain’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition between 2010 and 2015 are examples of coalitions of parties with divergent ideologies.

In fact, the BN, formed in 1973 as a result of an expansion of the Alliance Party, consists of ideologically different political parties.

However, common ideology matters in Malaysia when it concerns the Constitution. The country adopts a constitutional supremacy principle where all laws passed in Parliament have to be in line with the Constitution.

Arguably, DAP’s secular principle is in line with the federal Constitution: It respects Islam as the religion of the federation, as well as multiculturalism and freedom of religion. In contrast, PAS and some Islamic groups are pushing for an Islamic state that upholds hudud laws.

This is the time when PKR should take a stand on its ideology, since both DAP and PAS remain comfortable working with it. Clarifying its position would reassure Malaysians of PKR’s commitment to the Constitution.

Malaysians can choose between secularists DAP and PKR on one hand, and Islamist PAS on the other. PKR has to then justify the need for its existence if its ideology parallels DAP’s.

In other words, if PKR stands for secularism, it should consider merging with DAP as a single party.

For certain, the inability to stay committed to a common ideology would be a lost opportunity for what remains of PR, given BN is now at its weakest point since coming into power in 1957.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr Norshahril Saat is Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). He researches on Malaysian and Indonesian politics.