Mohamad Hasan’s vibes were the sanest to have emerged from Umno

Mohamad Hasan’s vibes were the sanest to have emerged from Umno

Yesterday

Letter to the Editor

Umno’s deputy president stuck to a middle-of-the-road stance and his proposed test of PAS’s sincerity was shrewd.

From Terence Netto

Umno’s deputy president Mohamad Hasan (Tok Mat) deserves credit for urging on the party a stance that, to put it broadly, was middle-of-the-road.

He espoused this position in his policy address to the youth, Wanita and Puteri wings of the party.

It was not an easy position to take at a time when rightist voices are shrill within the party such that a disinclination to take the tub-thumping and cymbals-clashing ones would put an exponent on the outs with the muscle flexing crowd.

Not only did Tok Mat reach for the middle octaves, he asserted Umno should not alienate the non-Malays on the Peninsula and its friends in Sabah and Sarawak.

This is the sane middle path that is more recognisably Umno than the leanings of the party towards the ethno-centricism that characterised the Mahathir era (1981-2003).

There are no prizes for guessing who Tok Mat was referring to when he cautioned in his policy address: “You cannot impose your conservative and radical ideology on Umno.”

Although he did not mention names, his suggestion of a test of sincerity of PAS’s desire to collaborate with Umno in state polls and in the general election (GE16) to come was shrewd.

He proposed that PAS dissolve the Terengganu state assembly and allow Umno to contest half the seats in the snap poll.

PAS won 27 state and 7 parliamentary seats the last time that voters in the state went to the polls.

It was a wipeout for Umno.

It would be too much to expect that Umno would simply concede Terengganu to PAS at the next election as part of a collaboration with the Islamist party though that seems to be the drift of the rhetoric emanating from the mullahs.

PAS appears keener than Umno on having such a collaboration.

Hence Tok Mat’s proposed test of PAS’s sincerity that they dissolve the Terengganu state assembly and allow Umno to contest a number of the state seats is not an outlandish proposition.

Unless of course PAS harbours hegemonistic intentions and considers Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah and Perlis as their fiefdom, and as such off limits to Umno.

Given that Tok Mat has used the occasion of Umno’s general assembly to reiterate that his party rejects conservative and radical leanings in its ideology and following this up with a proposed test of PAS’s sincerity on electoral collaboration, the ball is in the Islamic party’s court, so to speak.

It would be interesting to see how PAS reacts to these leanings and moves by Umno.

Umno is a nationalist party whereas PAS is a religious one; their ideologies cannot easily coexist.

Umno has a modernist outlook whereas PAS, at the end of a long day, would wind up as obscurantist.

It is only realism to accept what all this entails and take one’s drift accordingly.

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.