PAS being led by presidential whim, says DAP leader

 





PAS is being led by presidential whim and fancy, not by ideology and principle, said DAP national vice-chair M Kulasegaran.

The MP for Ipoh Barat said the announcement by president Abdul Hadi Awang that PAS MPs will not vote down Budget 2016 was the latest in a series of declarations by the chief that was at odds with positions intimated by lesser lights in the party.

“By now this variance has happened often enough and on issues grave enough to raise questions on what is it that has been making the PAS positions on issues of national importance a guessing game for others,” queried the federal legislator.

He observed that a consensus was firming up among opposition MPs that the best way to remove Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak was to vote down the Budget he has tabled for 2016.

“This is being contemplated on the reasoned assumption that since the Budget is silent on the RM2.5 billion donation to his personal accounts, there is a lacuna too big for the opposition to ignore and therefore it has to be voted down,” rationalised Kulasegaran.

“Further, the speaker is not likely to make space for the tabling of the no-confidence motion against the PM that the opposition leader has filed and so a vote against the Budget is an imperative recourse for MPs opposed to the shenanigans surrounding 1MDB,” he argued.

Kulasegaran said it was sad that an opposition party of PAS’ durability and standing has reduced its positions and policy making to a guessing game in which the lesser lights of the party intimate that it will go one way, only for the president to interpose for a change of tack.

“We can understad if the issues before the country are hazy and a blur and on that score, there is doubt and hesitation at what the proper position to be adopted should be.

“But when the basic issues - of corruption and mismanagement - are the same and that only their forms and manifestations are different, position and policy making by a major politcal party cannot be a guessing game without casuing the same party suffer in the eyes of its appraisers,” he expatiated.

Kulasegaran said he was puzzled why PAS was allowing such a situation to develop when the instincts of politicians in the second tier of its leadership were consonant with the general thrust of opinions among the rest of the opposition.

“This situation diminishes confidence rather than builds it, so why this is not troubling to the party is a question that is extremely puzzling.

“The party has got to wake up to the reality that its governance by presidential whim and fancy is inviting public mistrust and suspicion,” said the lawyer-legislator.