Friday 29 Mar 2024
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BATU PAHAT: As soon as the debates started at the PAS assembly yesterday, grassroots leaders took to the floor to vent their feelings about rifts in the party that have resulted from the feud among the party’s top leadership.

Delegates started giving emotive speeches about the rivalry that has been brewing throughout the party even during the tabling of the party’s innocuous 2013-2014 annual report.

This prompted the party’s permanent chairman Datuk Abu Kassim Abdullah to remind delegates to focus only on the report and leave the policy debates for later.

However, this did not deter delegates such as Muhammad Qadi from Kalabakan, Sabah, who used the podium to talk about the factionalism that is breaking out among his own division members.

“We have doctors, engineers and teachers who are joining our division and creating a group within our group,” Muhammad said when debating on the annual report.

He also criticised the party’s central committee for allowing leaks of its decisions.

Emotions in the party have been high ever since PAS and its Pakatan Rakyat allies, PKR and DAP, were embroiled in the Selangor menteri besar (MB) crisis in July.

The party became divided after its senior leadership came out with two contrasting decisions on the crisis.

The party’s elected central committee had gone along with PKR’s decision to remove Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim as Selangor MB. It also decided to go with PKR on who should take over from Abdul Khalid.

In contrast, the PAS president and the party’s powerful council of Muslim scholars had been against the removal of Abdul Khalid. After Abdul Khalid was removed, they nominated certain Selangor assemblymen who were not endorsed by PKR and DAP.

Another delegate, from Kuala Krai, Kelantan told of how branches and divisions in the state had started feuding with each other over which faction was right.

“Our rifts cannot be covered up anymore. Our members are attacking each other, our leaders are attacking each other.

“Does the leadership realise this? And what are you doing to resolve this,” asked the Kuala Krai delegate, who is known as Uztaz Zulkifli Yacob.

“We want the ulama to be strong and we do not want members to walk out on our deputy president just because we disagree with him.”

He was referring to how some members had walked out of the hall during deputy president Mohamad Sabu’s speech at the youth wing assembly. — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on September 19, 2014.

 

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