Mr Kee is explicit that he does not want an Islamic state -that he is strongly in favour of Malaysia being a secular state- and yet he is telling Christians, non malays and middle class Malaysians opposed to theocracy to vote and support PAS. His advocacy for Vote PAS is based not on principle per se but pragmatism and expedience. His statement sums it all: “PAS is a political reality that cannot be wished away, and it has the potential, in partnership with PKR and the DAP, of unseating the incumbent government, which needs to be removed for the sake of real and positive change.”
I think most detractors of the theocratic state will not trust PAS. It is hard to imagine that the majority of the clerics and hardliners within PAS will ever give up their objective to make Malaysia a theocratic state in line with what they believe is the Almighty’s ordained mission. Neither is there any indication that ‘edrogens’ and professionals within PAS like Nizar Jamaluddin, Khalid Samad or Kamaruddin Jaafar will prevail over the other group. So far they are given the public face by PAS to allay detractors’ fears for expedience to dislodge UMNO led BN. Neither do detractors like Kee bother. The immediate Evil Incarnate to them is the incumbent BN which has to be rid off at all costs and if it takes sleeping with the Devil to do so, so be it. The end game – PAS’s ascendancy to establish the theocratic state – is a proposition too fraught by intervening factors and other variables to make it though a real possibility is however not an immediate probability to lose sleepless nights over.

This is the prevailing thinking. Implicit in that thinking is that it is political reality that (a) Malay Vote will dominate Malaysian Politics (as Dr Mahathir alluded to in Che Det) (b) Malay Vote is unlikely to cross either the race or the religion lines (c) the Malay vote is therefore interchangeable between Umno and PAS/PKR to extent PAS/PKR no matter what – and in spite of so called ‘new politics’ – uphold the constitutional special privileges of article 153 and the primacy of Islam and institution of Malay rulers.

The Malay vote is generally not interchangeable between UMNO/MCA with that of DAP.

Which explains why with the imminent GE in mind the DAP secretary general (LGE) has played complicit with the Islamist ideology by banning sports betting in Penang, professing to govern like the Caliph Umar Abdul Aziz and eulogizing the greatness of “the history of Islamic civilization, whose global empires had not only contributed breathtaking art and architecture, but also the introduction of numbers, algebra and astronomy”!

We have not heard DAP’s traditional secular pluralistic principles been espoused publicly for some time. The only exception is the use of Allah by East Malaysians Controversy championed by DAP in the public domain and Sibu by-election but that’s Ok as it was a case where PAS was complicit to support the East Malaysian Bahasa reading’s stand, so that the issue poses no wedge between PAS and DAP within PR.

More important it is the DAP’s sense of the pragmatism of its traditional supporters – the Non Malays – who are more likely to cross the race and religion lines to vote for PAS in Malay majority constituencies and in any case will still vote for DAP against MCA in spite of DAP’s playing complicit with the Islamist ideology of PAS for the more immediate pragmatic objective of dislodging UMNO led BN.

In the premises above – the key theme of which is pragmatism of the Non Malay Vote – it is ironical that it might well be our 4th PM, Tun Dr Mahathir (TDM) who will accelerate UMNO’s fall from power (if not in next GE then the GE after next) though TDM most decidedly intends to perpetuate it.

PAS’s political ascendancy was in no small measure attributable to it being the main beneficiary of Reformasi borned from TDM’s ouster of Anwar. It was during the 22 years of TDM’s administration that engaged in aggressive Islamisation of the administration – to compete with PAS – that ended up in many Islamists being embedded in all tiers of administration. They form the Fifth column in waiting for PAS to rule. They are so ubiquitous and powerful that they could press their agenda independently of their political masters. For eg. – the Allah issue. It’s definitely a festering problem for BN in its fixed deposit states of Sabah & Sarawak. Sibu By election showed it. Hishamuddin regretted his predecessor’s decision of the ban and yet has evinced no political will, in the face of resistance from these groups, to revoke the ban as lobbied by MCA!

When Islamic agenda takes such a pervasive influence in the UMNO’s administration it serves only to blur the line between UMNO and PAS making pragmatic non Malays and Muslims think like Kee when he wrote “From the look of it, there is not much difference in principle from the current state”!

All things being equal the difference is Corruption. To all (Malays or Non Malays) it is anathema. And even that, it was during TDM’s administration promoting mega projects and Privatisation that provided opportunities to political elites and their cronies to refine it to the state of art. It was also during TDM’s time that the administration started implementing NEP in a way that is entirely race specific deviation from its original laudable two pronged objectives. This helps alienate and push minorities to the Opposition including PAS. What TDM fails to realise is that whilst his authoritarian rule and force of personality could hold together his administration in spite of all these depredations, the same is not applicable in case of his anointed successors.

TDM further exacerbates UMNO/BN’s problems by his active playing of ‘king maker’s role, in an attempt to perpetuate the very legacy -that will give the boost to his son’s political career- the very legacy that many Malaysians reject and have rejected.
After playing a not insignificant role in getting Pak Lah to retire, he gives his patronage to Ketuanan NGOs and now undermines the very 1 Malaysia/NEM that Najib – and Chua Soi Lek – hope will bring back minorities to the fold.

By giving minorities no space and hope minorities are forced to think most pragmatically with ‘nothing much to lose’ attitude like our Mr Kee Thuan Chye to support the very PAS that they have feared.

TDM may well make a mistake in his calculations relating the importance of the Minorities esp Chinese Vote. If PAS/PKR manage to retain 35 to 40% of Malay Vote, all it requires to dislodge BN is 80 – 90 or even 95% of Non Malay especially Chinese Vote solidly delivered to DAP and, crossing racial/religious lines, to PKR/PAS as well to end BN’s hegemony!

It may be karma, the very actions by TDM to save his legacy is very factor that will accelerate its ending if BN’s/UMNO, unable to reform, shall fall from power in no small way due to what TDM had done, when he was the PM, and is still doing on the side lines after he has given up the post.

///Even IF the fundamentalists in PAS prevail in the creation of the next Gomen; would they be able to roll back the whole social-political scenario in the country? After so many years of our interaction with the rest of the world, would they suddenly shut themselves from the rest of the world? Cases like Afghanistan, or even Pakistan are rather incomparable; the majority of their people have never interacted with the world/// #11 by waterfrontcoolie.

My personal view is that I don’t see why not (ie PAS fundamentalists prevailing).

I agree that we don’t take incomparable cases of Afghanistan, or even Pakistan for reference.

Take for example, Iran. You’d be surprised how modern in terms of infrastructure Teheran is (in many places surpassing KL). During Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s there were also the normal upper and middle classes, professional people, economists, planners, bankers, architects, journalists all have traveled and even studied abroad. The country was opened to the world with US/CIA backing. However due to rampant corruption of elites and brutality of its intelligence agency, Savak, people were against the Shah, Ayatollah Khomeini did not counter any substantial resistance when he promulgated the Islamic theocratic constitution which has subsisted since Dec 1979 till today.

There is something about Religion and its lure that one should not underestimate.

The other case is Turkey, the most modern and secular of all countries whose majority are Muslims.

Secularism has longer history there. In the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey became the first secular state in the Muslim world. Its first president Kamal Atatürk’s in 1920s abandoned shariah and adopted a secular legal system based on Western codes of law, as well as the declaration of a secular republic in 1928, both radical departures from tradition.

There’s a strong elite and class in power defending secularism and worry about creeping Islamisation but notstanding the tide of religiosity (since Iranian revolution) is not easy to hold back.

I think sometimes in 1978 its Board of Higher Education imposed head scarves ban on female university students. However the rectors and university authorities refused to enforce the ban.

In 2007 Islamic Party [Justice and Development Party (AKP)] led by Anwar’s friend Tayyip Erdogan won the general election. In 2008 Turkey’s parliament lifted the decades-old ban on Islamic headscarves in universities, despite the fierce opposition of the secular establishment.

Today the influence of Islam is on the rise and interest in joining EU less..Some of the modern hotels are beginning to have strictly isolated pools for women only and serve no beers. Even political censorship, which in itself is not unheard of in Turkey, is now practiced in the name of religious modesty eg the ministry of education removed from school books the images of the well-known Delacroix painting “Liberty Leading the People” for reasons that the bare breasts of the standard-bearer in the depiction of France’s 1830 July Revolution.