PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang believes that most Umno Supreme Council members are in favour of cooperating with the Islamist party through Muafakat Nasional and Perikatan Nasional during future elections.
“Not all leaders in Umno want this cooperation. I understand that the majority in the supreme council wants cooperation. Umno should listen to its leaders, not the divisions.
“Divisions represent the grassroots. Itu lain cerita(that is a different story). We cannot follow western democracy. We must follow the leadership.
Perhaps owing to all the ‘Western style’ surgery that has kept him going beyond his natural lifetime, it seems this old fellow has forgotten that it was ‘Western style’ democracy that gained him his leadership position in the first place.
Otherwise, he would still be a lowly self-styled cleric subject to the rule of his local royals in Kelantan and might even have faced summary Hudud justice (instead of namby pamby, human rightsy ‘Western style’ legal proceedings) over his upstart insurrections of days gone by that resulted in loss of life.
Having, thanks to democracy, been elected to his leadership position and then managed to barter his party into an UMNO led government (the party he originally described as apostate for prolonging ‘unIslamic’ rule) the greedy old boy would rather hang on to his power and order the younger chaps and grassroots to shut up and do as their leaders tell them.
The message? Don’t act as I did as a young man, act as I tell you because I want more than anything to continue to drive around in a Mercedes government car and enjoy the spoils of office until the day the doctors can no longer continue to patch me up.
In what Holy book this lecture can be found is quite another matter.