ONE must be wondering who between the Proklamasi Melayu chief advocator Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad or PAS president Tun Hadi Awang is smarter in consenting to accept the embrace of the other.
Needless to say that the bottom line is a win-win pact for both senior politicians although it cannot be denied that the partial cross-over to the green side of the former twice premier entails a significant moral victory to the Islamist party more than anything else.
It can be construed that the preparedness of Dr Mahathir to reconcile with PAS which had been an opposition during his premiership reign from July 1981 to October 2003 and from May 2018 to March 2020 is nothing more than a last-ditch attempt to salvage anything left of his political legacy which has nosedived in tandem with his incalcitrant attitude of recent times.
For Hadi who has hailed his foe-turned friend as a “formidable statesman”, Dr Mahathir’s donning of the green vest at the Munajat Rakyat Kelantan gathering on Friday night (July 21) – where he also addressed a sold-out crowd at the Sultan Muhammad IV Stadium in Kota Bahru – is the very evidence that “PAS is always prepared to accept anybody with non-extremist qualities”.
Therefore, history was re-written when the nonagenarian statesman stood on the rostrum rallying the crowd – and his target Malay audience across the six states that will face state elections on Aug 12 – to ensure that the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition emerges triumphant at all costs.
“I never thought that Tun would ever don a green vest like this tonight,” quipped PAS vice-president Datuk Mohd Amar Abdullah. The now caretaker deputy menteri besar has no doubts that the presence of the eminent statesman could propel PN to continue advancing to Putrajaya after this.
Interestingly, when met by the media afterwards, Mohd Amar expressed hope that Dr Mahathir’s maiden presence would eventually “clean up his past mistakes”.
According to him, PAS is always open to accepting any individual who has reformed to join the party’s struggle. For the record, Dr Mahathir had in the 1960s once boarded the PAS stage after being fired from UMNO by Tunku Abdul Rahman after his forceful advocacy of ethnic Malay nationalism brought him into conflict with the country’s first premier.
As Dr Mahathir appeared on the stage of PAS and PN to defend the state governments of Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah – and presumably aspiring to wrest control of Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Penang – it is now a no-brainer that the Pakatan Harapan-Barisan Nasional (PH-BN) alliance would probably need every vote from the non-Malay electorate to stem PN’s forward march. – July 23, 2023
