New PAS leadership killed Pakatan, says Kit Siang

DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang believes the new PAS leadership has brought the Pakatan Rakyat coalition to an end. – The Malaysian Insider file pic, June 9, 2015.

The new PAS leadership has killed Pakatan Rakyat (PR), DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang said today, and was showing no signs to keep the opposition pact from collapsing.

He said PAS had also been violating the PR's common policy framework over the past year and this effectively made the coalition non-functioning.

"It is no exaggeration to say that there will be no PR if there is no PR Common Policy Framework and the PR consensus operational principle.

"The new PAS leadership killed Pakatan Rakyat at the PAS Muktamar and there are no signs of any effort to resuscitate PR by reaffirming the PR Common Policy Framework and PR consensus operational principle," Lim said in a statement today.

At its muktamar or annual congress which ended Saturday, PAS pushed through a motion to cut ties with DAP, a tit-for-tat move to DAP's decision in March to sever its working relationship with PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang.

DAP accused Hadi of unilaterally overriding common decisions that PAS and other PR allies, PKR and DAP, had agreed to especially opposing the implementation hudud or the Islamic criminal code in Kelantan.

"In fact, it is because of the serious violations of the PR Common Policy Framework and the PR consensus operational principle that PR at the national leadership level had effectively ceased to function for the past year," Lim said.

Some PAS delegates and leaders from its progressive faction, however, are unhappy with the PAS leadership, led by ulama and conservatives, for adopting the motion to cut ties with DAP without debate by the assembly.

The conservative leadership said that the motion was not binding, and the decision to cut ties with DAP had to be discussed by the party's shura council consisting of clerics and the central committee.

Soon after news of the motion's adoption on Saturday, however, Lim declared PR dead and said all that was left to do were funeral rites for the seven-year-old pact.

PR's lynchpin party PKR said it would mediate between the two warring parties so that coalition remains intact.

- TMI