Leaked PAS message: Team up with Umno in S'gor

 

A leaked screenshot of a conversation on the instant messaging application WhatsApp has inadvertently revealed that PAS central committee leaders have been actively discussing possible scenarios of leaving Pakatan Rakyat.

In what is probably the biggest hint to date that the threat of Pakatan disintegrating is true, the screenshot circulated on Facebook showed central committee member Mohd Zuhdi Marzuki discussing teaming up with Umno.

Zuhdi, a lecturer, outlined a scenario on how PAS could defect from Pakatan and later form a simple majority government in the Selangor state assembly with the help of Umno, while keeping Khalid Ibrahim as Menteri Besar.

The conversation took place in a WhatsApp group involving all PAS central committee leaders.

PAS members who did not want to be named confirmed with Malaysiakini that the screenshot was authentic.

Later today Zuhdi in a Facebook posting did not deny the message, but instead denied that he was part of the group that has put forward the idea of leaving Pakatan.

"I was just outlining scenarios based on my imagination because I was asked to come up with a few scenarios.

"But I am not part of the group that has proposed to leave Pakatan. This is slander aimed at implicating me as the one who came up with the idea," he said.

Zuhdi is the operations director of the PAS research centre (PPP).

Friction within PAS revealed

What would be more unsettling for Pakatan insiders is Zuhdi's admission that no less than 10 central committee members, some of them strong allies of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, "has strongly supported the proposal" to leave Pakatan.

This development follows a week in which PAS' top leadership appears to be breaking ranks with PKR and DAP as well as some of its own members over the replacement of Khalid.

This despite a Pakatan Rakyat council meeting comprising leaders from all three parties that claimed to have arrived at a consensus over the matter.

Meanwhile the leaked WhatsApp conversation also appeared to show the friction running deep within PAS itself.

When Zuhdi included co-operation with Umno in the possibility list, Kuala Krai MP Hatta Ramli (above) immediately shot it down.

"Working together with Umno? I'm out!" he appeared to have replied instantly.

Racist face of PAS?

The screenshot of the conversation started making rounds in the social media earlier this morning.

Another highly disturbing feature of the conversation is the blatant tone of racist politics, with Zuhdi commenting that his scenario would return political dominance to the Malays and that they could negate "DAP and non-Muslims".

"After this, if DAP and non-Muslims make noise about the Allah issue or raids, we can just swat them away," he said.

"At the end of this year just change the borders to return all the Malay-Muslim political power," he wrote, without any apparent disagreement from the group.