My answer is “No” to PAS Vice President Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man’s question whether I consider PAS worse than UMNO but Tuan Ibrahim is wrong in thinking that I am wooing UMNO.

DAP would not have formed Pakatan Rakyat with PAS together with PKR if we in the DAP had regarded PAS as worse than UMNO, and I am still hoping that Pakatan Rakyat can remain as a political force to be reckoned with provided all the Pakatan Rakyat component parties remain true, sincere and faithful to the PR Common Policy Framework as well as the PR consensus operational principle that no one political leader or single political party can make or veto any decision arrived collectively by consensus of all three PR parties.

The Pakatan Rakyat stalemate and crisis have arisen because of PAS’ failure to abide by the PR Common Policy Framework and the PR consensus operational principle, and unless both these principles can be restored, it is impossible for PR to continue to be a political alternative to Barisan Nasional and a political force to be reckoned with, as both the credibility and legitimacy of Pakatan Rakyat would have been destroyed by the own doings of PR component parties.

I have just returned from a week-long study tour of Jordan and Egypt with four DAP Members of Parliament, Teresa Kok (Seputeh), Liew Chin Tong (Kluang), Zairil Khir Johari (Bukit Bendera) and Steven Sim (Bukit Mertajam) meeting local intellectuals and activists and with Malaysian students in Amman, Mafraq, Karak, Alexandria and Cairo where we learned not only about the political developments in these two countries but also the concerns and aspirations of Malaysian students in the Middle East.

As I have told Malaysian students in Alexandria and Cairo, it is a disservice to Islam to lump those who have differences of view with regard to hudud and its implementation as anti-Islam, as this will not only be lumping the first five Prime Ministers of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein, Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah, but also UMNO as “anti-Islam”, and even those who had co-operated with UMNO as “anti-Islam” – which would include PAS which had formed a coalition government with UMNO for four years from 1973 to 1977. Read the rest of this entry »