PAS president digging own grave, says Zam

Former Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said that PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang’s tahaluf siyasi (political cooperation) with non-Muslim parties and endorsement of Anwar Ibrahim’s supporters, will boot him out of the party.

 

In a scathing attack on Hadi, PAS deputy president Muhammad Sabu, DAP and PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim, Zam (as Zainuddin is known) wrote that Hadi's willingness to work with non-Muslims will lead to the same fate as his predecessor Asri Muda, who was voted out of PAS for wanting to work with Umno. 

 

In his recent blog posting, Zam said Hadi’s tahaluf siyasi with the non Muslim parties has dug his own grave.

 

He also said that Hadi had allowed Anwar supporters such as Mat Sabu to inflitrate the party.

He is now being “drowned” just as former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed would have drowned had he not sacked Anwar from Umno in 1998, wrote Zam. 

 

He further added that Hadi’s undoing of himself became clear when he supported Mat Sabu and sidelined (the then deputy president) Nasharuddin Md Isa at the 2011 PAS annual delegate conference Muktamar. 

 

“One day before PAS booted out progressive ulama such as Nasharuddin and Astora Jebat, a great religious writer, I bumped into Husam Musa, Mahfuz Omar and Muhammad Sabu at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

"Knowing that Mat Sabu was a challenger to the deputy president’s post, I suspected a confrontation was happening. I believed that it happened with the blessings of Hadi,” said Zam. 

 

The former minister said that Hadi (right in photo) had “replaced an Islamic intellectual” with “a leader whose strength depends on actions and controversies”.

 

He said this was also when Hadi “threw away” the idea of an Islamic state in preference of a  “welfare state”.

 

Zam said that Mat Sabu has been given moral support then by Hadi to challenge Nasharuddin and this annihilated the party’s image as a religious party. 

 

He said that with such support, it was Hadi himself who had went for the cooperation of Muslim and non-Muslim parties to build an utopian country which is clean, just and honest, to replace Umno.

 

 Also while it may appear that tahaluf siyasi may taken PAS away from the hands of the ulama, Zam believes Hadi’s post is not very secure now with the party's rocky relationship with Pakatan Rakyat an indicator.

 

“Therefore the present PAS ulama leadership will not be thrown away or sidelined. Hadi will receive the same fate as the religious nationalist leader Asri,” predicted Zam.