Mahathir atau Najib PM?

Seolah-olah macam dia Perdana Menteri pula sekarang ini.

Harakah Daily

KUALA LUMPUR, 24 April (Hrkh) –“Seolah-olah macam dia Perdana Menteri pula sekarang ini.”

Demikian pandangan yang dikemukakan oleh Timbalan Presiden PAS, Ustaz Nasharuddin Mat Isa kepada Harakahdaily dalam satu wawancara semalam.

Menurutnya, mantan Perdana Menteri, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad kini dilihat mempunyai pengaruh ke atas Perdana Menteri, Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak.

“Saya melihat unsur mempengaruhi itu ada dalam kabinet Najib ini.Mutakhir ini saya tengok makin banyak kelibat Tun Mahathir di atas pentas.

“Dia juga buat kenyataan dalam akhbar, hadir dalam program-program besar kerajaan dan mendapat liputan yang agak menyerlah di dalam media.Seolah-olah macam dia (Mahathir) pula PM sekarang ini,”jelasnya.

Dalam pada itu, Nasharuddin dalam mengulas mengenai kabinet ‘Mesra Rakyat’ yang dibentuk Najib menjelaskan, memang wujud pertikaian terhadap anggota kabinet yang dilantik.

“Berkenaan kabinet mesra rakyat,bagi saya ada lagi yang boleh dipertikaikan terutamanya pelantikan mereka yang telah ditolak oleh rakyat, dalam kabinet hari ini mereka bukan sahaja ditolak oleh parti tetapi rakyat.

“Tanpa saya menyebut nama sesiapa pun menteri atau timbalan menteri, kita semua sudah mengenai hal tersebut.Ada di kalangan menteri atau timbalan menteri yang dilantik itu yang menimbulkan tanda tanya di kalangan rakyat,”jelasnya lagi.

Tambahnya, memang tidak dapat dinafikan bahawa ada perubahan yang mahu atau cuba dibuat oleh Najib dalam peringkat awal pemerintahannya.

“Tetapi saya rasa masih terlalu awal untuk dinilai sama ada positif atau sebaliknya perubahan yang cuba diusahakan Najib,”tegasnya. – mks.

(Ikuti wawancara sepenuhnya dalam Harakah cetak akan datang) _

Digantung dari hadiri sidang Dewan Rakyat, Gobind failkan saman

Suara Keadilan

KUALA LUMPUR, 23 APRIL (SK) – AHLI Parlimen Puchong, Gobind Singh Deo pagi ini memfailkan saman terhadap empat pihak berhubung dengan pengantungan beliau dari menghadiri sidang Parlimen.

Tindakan saman berkenaan dibuat keatas Speaker Dewan Rakyat Pandikar Amin Mulia; Menteri di jabatan Pedana Menteri Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz; Setiausaha Dewan Rakyat dan kerajaan Malaysia.

Saman berkenaan difailkan berhubung pengantungan beliau selama 12 bulan daripada menghadiri sidang Parlimen berkuat kuasa 16 Mac lalu.

Gobind yang diwakili oleh Karpal Singh & Co memfailkan saman berkenaan di Mahkamah Tinggi Kuala Lumpur pada jam 11 pagi ini.

Dalam writ saman berkenaan, beliau menggariskan keputusan menggantung beliau dari Dewan Rakyat selama setahun termasuk kehilangan elaun adalah tidak sah.

Ahli Parlimen Puchong itu didakwa mengeluarkan kenyataan yang mendakwa Timbalan Perdana Menteri terbabit dalam kes pembunuhan dan juga menghina Timbalan Yang Dipertua Dewan Rakyat.

Usul bagi menggantung Gobind telah dibentangkan di Dewan Rakyat oleh Mohamed Nazri yang membentangkan usul tersebut 12 Mac lalu.

Turut hadir memberi sokongan kepada Gobind ialah bapanya, Karpal Singh dan juga Ahli Parlimen Lembah Pantai Nurrul Izzah Anwar

RPK and Malaysian justice — The Malaysian Insider

The Malaysian Insider

APRIL 23 — Raja Petra Kamarudin today decided to stand up for justice by running away from the law.

Irony and contradictions like these are normal in Malaysian life. More so in the life of the Malaysia Today editor who wrote a few months ago that he would end up being detained without trial under the Internal Security Act where he will fast to death.

Today, he wrote: “After two ISA detentions, I do not plan to allow them to get me so easily the third time around. I also refuse to face treason charges that will result in me being sent to the gallows. I love my life and wish to remain alive a few years longer if possible.”

Treason or rather durhaka was also his reason for self-exile from Selangor where the sedition charge is being heard in the Petaling Jaya court. The minor royalty claimed to have left Selangor over family differences and reaffirmed today he would never return to the state, sticking to his principles and sense of justice.

Yet, he concluded his post today by saying: “I shall, however, attend the court hearing when the situation permits, i.e. I am no longer to be charged for treason and I get an assurance from the powers-that-be that the government’s appeal against my ISA release is withdrawn forthwith and that no new detention order has been issued.”

One knows not whether Raja Petra, called Pete by family and RPK by most Malaysians, will be charged for treason in going against the Perak palace over the state’s constitutional impasse.

But he has a slew of charges related to his writings about murdered Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu. He has been held under the ISA, charged with sedition and faces criminal defamation charges for the same weblog posts.

RPK too pointed out that he has been held and charged for the same offence a few times, going against the grain of justice where one cannot be charged twice for the same crime. Such is the irony of the Malaysian justice system.

And therefore, the controversial blogger prefers to be free, seen as some as his way of continuing his crusade and others as his style of running down people and continuing to be a thorn in the flesh of Datuk Seri Najib Razak, whom he has tried to link to the Altantuya murder.

As yet, there is no proof that Najib is involved but conspiracy theories abound, some which have landed RPK in court over the past two years. His brush with the law also reflects the deep divide over whether there is continued selective prosecution and persecution by the state and the state of the Malaysian judiciary.

Prosecuting RPK in the criminal justice system or holding him under ISA might shut him up but it will not lay to rest the conspiracy theories and rumours that have dogged Najib since 2006. The only way is to clear his name to the Malaysian public, which was even recommended by his patron Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Otherwise, RPK the fugitive will not rest until he sees his version of justice is done. And if RPK does not rest, neither can Najib nor the rest of Malaysia for some time to come.

Local Ambitions Erode India’s Election-Season Alliances

The Wall Street Journal

By NIRAJ SHETH

NEW DELHI — The likely result of India’s monthlong national elections is becoming muddier, not clearer, as more votes are cast.

Exit polls are prohibited and the choices made by the country’s 714 million eligible voters won’t be announced until May 16. What has become apparent since polling began on April 16 is just how much the two top parties could struggle to form a government, as alliances each established with smaller parties before polls opened begin to break down.

Neither the ruling Congress party nor the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party had been expected to win a majority of Parliament’s 545 seats. Each was expected to rely on a coalition of regional parties in its pursuit of a governing majority. As part of those alliances, the national parties made agreements with their local allies not to field candidates against each other in key constituencies.

But as Indians voted Thursday, the second of five voting days, many of those alliances had ruptured, and more regional parties are insisting they want to garner as many votes as they can rather than play second fiddle to the goals of Congress or the BJP.

Reuters

A woman walks past policemen after casting her vote at a polling center during the second phase of Indian elections in Panvel.

By law, a government must be formed by June 2. If no lasting majority alliance is formed, India could see a revolving door of weak governments and possibly another election. That could significantly hurt the economy and investor confidence just as India is hoping its slowdown will be shorter and shallower than most of the world’s other major nations because it has a large domestic market and doesn’t rely as much on exports as others do.

In many of the 141 districts that voted Thursday, candidates once seen as teammates were suddenly competing. In Orissa state, which wrapped up voting Thursday, the BJP faced off against former ally Naveen Patnaik. This month, his regional party, the Biju Janata Dal, broke off an 11-year partnership with the BJP, contesting the state’s 21 seats on its own for the first time since Mr. Patnaik created the party in 1998.

In the last national vote five years ago, Congress and its two regional allies won 39 of 42 seats in the large southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Those alliances have since crumbled, and Congress went to polls alone Thursday — in a state that Congress needs to win big if it hopes to shape a coalition.

If independent-minded regional parties poll sufficiently well, they could potentially form a government that excludes both Congress and the BJP.

Some of them could also quickly repair alliances if they had the prospect of being part of a coalition government, says Sanjeer Alam, a political researcher at the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. At least some of the hostile rhetoric between the national parties and their erstwhile allies represents the staking out of negotiating positions.

Meanwhile, in West Bengal state, which starts voting April 30, Congress’s leftist allies have already broken off to form a “Third Front” alliance unaligned with either national bloc.

And in the northern state of Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav, a former railways minister, split from Congress after the two couldn’t come to an agreement on which party would contest which districts. Mr. Yadav has since teamed up with two other parties in northern India, forming what they call the “Fourth Front.”

Alarm Grows Over Pakistan’s Failure to Halt Militant Gains

The New York Times

Mohammad Sajjad/Associated Press

Taliban militants on Thursday outside a mosque where tribal elders and members of the Taliban met in Daggar, the main town in the Buner district of Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — With 400 to 500 Taliban fighters newly in control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from here, Pakistani authorities have deployed only a poorly paid and equipped constabulary force — numbering just several hundred — to the area.

The Taliban appeared to be consolidating control in the district, Buner, on Thursday after moving in and establishing checkpoints on Wednesday. Residents said Taliban militants held a meeting, or jirga, with local elders and the local administration on Thursday. The residents said the meeting yielded a truce similar to the one reached with local leaders in the Swat Valley, which resulted in the agreement by the government of President Asif Ali Zardari to allow the imposition of Islamic law there 10 days ago.

“This concession represents a serious development and reflects both the growing strength of the Pakistani Taliban and the inability of the Pakistani army to conduct successful counterinsurgency operations,” said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who just returned from his fifth visit to Pakistan.

The fall of Buner has raised new international alarm about the ability of the Pakistani government to fend off an unrelenting Taliban advance from the Swat Valley, where as part of the truce agreement, the Pakistani Army remains in its barracks. The Taliban have moved to within a few hours’ drive of Islamabad, the capital of this country, and the neighboring garrison city of Rawalpindi.

The Pakistani military does not have a presence in Buner, Pakistani and Western officials said. From the hills of the district, the Taliban have access to the flatlands of the district of Swabi, which lead directly to the four-lane highway that connects Islamabad and Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, where much of the Pakistani Taliban operate.

On Thursday, four platoons of the paramilitary police constabulary force moved into Buner (pronounced boon-AIR), which is home to about a million people and is a gateway to another major Pakistani city, Mardan. Four platoons had arrived Wednesday.

Each platoon has about 40 officers. They face Taliban militants armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Intimidated by the militants, the local police have retreated into their stations, residents said. At least one constabulary officer had been killed and another seriously wounded already, the police said Thursday.

“The news over the past several days is very disturbing,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters. “The administration is extremely concerned.”

Reflecting the deep concerns of the Obama administration, the chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was in Islamabad for the second time in two weeks to meet with Pakistan’s top military and intelligence commanders.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been underlining the alarm over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. On Wednesday she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the deterioration of security in nuclear-armed Pakistan “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world.”

On Thursday, she said referring to the country’s nuclear arsenal: “You know, we spend a lot of time worrying about Iran — Pakistan already has them. And they are widely dispersed in the country.”

On Thursday morning, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, called Mr. Zardari, “to get his personal judgment and hear what his strategy is,” Mr. Holbrooke said. He did not disclose what the answer was.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, visiting Marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C., who are preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, also urged Pakistan’s leaders to act swiftly to a profound danger.

“My hope is that there will be an increasing recognition on the part of the Pakistani government that the Taliban in Pakistan are in fact an existential threat to the democratic government of that country,” Mr. Gates said. “I think that some of the leaders certainly understand that. But it is important that they not only recognize it, but take the appropriate actions to deal with it.”

At the Pentagon, several senior uniformed and civilian officials also expressed worry.

One senior Defense Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on policy matters, called the deployment of the constabulary force “a cosmetic effort.”

A senior counter-terrorism official called the fast-moving Taliban operations “frightening.”

The Taliban told the local Buner leaders that they would not interfere with nongovernmental organizations or government installations, nor openly display their weapons. Negotiations would be used to sort out friction with local residents, and there would be forgiveness for those who killed Taliban fighters in earlier combat.

To read more please go to :

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?ref=global-home

Jackie Chan Strikes a Chinese Nerve

The New York  Times

BEIJING — Jackie Chan, the Hong Kong martial arts star well known for showing his own failed stunts at the end of his films, may have another blooper to his credit.

“I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled,” Jackie Chan said during a gathering of Chinese government officials and business leaders.

 

When Mr. Chan told a high-level gathering of Chinese government officials and business leaders last weekend that Chinese people were ill equipped to handle liberty, he found himself on the receiving end of a verbal thrashing from across the Chinese-speaking world that is still reverberating.

“I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled,” Mr. Chan said during the Boao Forum, the annual economic conference held on Hainan Island with a keynote speech by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. “If we are not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”

The response was strongest in Hong Kong and Taiwan, which Mr. Chan, one of Asia’s wealthiest and best-known entertainers, held out as particularly “chaotic.” But even some intellectuals in mainland China spoke out against stereotyping Chinese as people who crave authoritarian leadership.

Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s biggest newspapers, used its front page to anoint him “a knave.” Politicians in Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that China claims as sovereign territory, described him as “idiotic” and “ignorant.” Albert Ho, a Hong Kong legislator, called Mr. Chan a “racist,” adding: “People around the world are running their own countries. Why can’t Chinese do the same?”

Here on the mainland, a writer published online by The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, gave him a thumbs down. “I guess Jackie Chan has never experienced the lack of freedom, and has not been cruelly controlled,” the commentator, Li Hongbing, wrote.

As the storm gathered, words turned to action: the mayor of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, dropped Mr. Chan as an ambassador for the 2009 Summer Deaflympics in Taiwan. The Hong Kong Tourism Board said it would reconsider his role as its most high-profile spokesman. On Facebook, more than 8,000 people threw their weight behind a tongue-in-cheek effort to dispatch Mr. Chan to hypercontrolled North Korea.

“I wouldn’t watch his movies again unless he apologizes,” said Shing Hiu-yi, vice president of the Students’ Union Council at Hong Kong University, one of many groups that have been issuing condemnations and calling for boycotts. “What he said was insulting to the Chinese people.”

On the other hand, few have publicly acknowledged that Mr. Chan’s sentiments, even if “taken out of context,” as his spokesman insisted, are quietly accepted or embraced by many Chinese. The Communist Party has long argued that the people of China are ill suited for Western-style democracy. Even many educated Chinese unabashedly insist that the bulk of their brethren are too unschooled or unsophisticated to participate in matters of politics and governing.

Give the people too long a leash, the thinking goes, and everyone will end up strangled.

Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst of Chinese politics, said that there was a prevailing sentiment in the Chinese-speaking world that too much freedom could only fuel disharmony and instability, viewed as archenemies of China’s drive to put economic development first.

“Jackie Chan said those things because he thinks they are true, and there are major sections of society who couldn’t agree with him more,” Mr. Moses said. “But such thinking is increasingly out of touch with this simmering debate about what the extent of state authority should be.”

Mr. Chan’s remarks provoked some navel-gazing, especially on the Internet. In a subtle subversion, Yan Lieshan, one of China’s best-known writers, suggested that no amount of government control could help a nation lacking manners and morals. Writing in Southern Weekend, a liberal-leaning newspaper in Guangzhou, Mr. Yan bemoaned the neighbors who dump trash on his sidewalk and the cars that speed down his narrow street. “How I wish the relevant authorities would come and enforce the rules, but there is no one to control them,” he wrote. “When you lodge a complaint, no one responds.”

Although he was reared in Hong Kong by parents who fled mainland China, Mr. Chan, 55, has been an unalloyed Chinese patriot. He sang during the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and he angrily denounced protesters who sought to interrupt the torch relay. During an earlier swat at electoral politics, he called the 2004 presidential elections in Taiwan “the biggest joke in the world.”

Even if he believes that Chinese people need more control, many observers suggested that Mr. Chan was simply seeking to stroke the authoritarian government that recently banned his latest film, “Shinjuku Incident,” because of excessive violence.

Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said he was so infuriated by what he described as Mr. Chan’s pandering that he was organizing a boycott of a May 1 concert Mr. Chan had scheduled at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing.

“It’s easy to sacrifice freedom when you’re treated like a V.I.P. or some high-level official every time you come to China,” said Mr. Hu, who is known for his tart criticisms. “I’m sure Jackie Chan has never thought about the suffering of the little people who have no power.”

Condoleezza Rice approved ‘torture’ techniques

Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, personally approved a CIA request to use “waterboarding” and other harsh interrogation techniques.

Telegraph.co.uk

Condoleezza Rice verbally agreed the waterboarding of to al-Qaeda suspect Photo: GETTY

She verbally agreed to allow the methods to be used on Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda suspect, in July 2002, a Senate report has revealed.

Miss Rice’s role was outlined in a narrative released by the Senate Intelligence Committee as the controversy over alleged torture by the CIA continued to rage

The information indicates that the programme was approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

The new timeline suggests Miss Rice played a more significant role than she acknowledged in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee submitted in the autumn.

It remains unclear, however, who inside the Bush administration first floated the idea of using “waterboarding” – simulated drowning – and other “enhanced” techniques against terrorist suspects in the months after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s timeline came a day after the Senate Armed Services Committee released a detailed exhaustive report positing links between the CIA’s harsh interrogation programme and abuses of prisoners at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Daily revelations about the interrogation programme have followed Mr Obama’s decision to release four US Justice Department memos last Thursday.

The memos, running to 126 pages, were written by officials in Mr Bush’s Justice Department and contained explicit details of the CIA’s methods of extracting information from al-Qaeda suspects between 2002 and 2005.

They revealed that the highly controversial technique of “waterboarding” had been used 266 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, two senior al-Qaeda prisoners.

After initially indicating he opposed any prosecutions, on Tuesday he said he was open to congressional investigations of Bush administration officials and possible criminal charges.

According to the new timeline, drawn up from legal advice given to the CIA by the Bush administration, Miss Rice personally conveyed the Bush administration’s approval for waterboarding of Zubaydah to George Tenet, then CIA Director, in July 2002.

In the autumn, Miss Rice stated to the Senate Armed Services Committee that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed but could not recall details.

Days after Miss Rice spoke to Mr Tenet, the Justice Department approved the use of waterboarding in a top secret memo. Abu Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding some 83 times in August 2002.

Parliamentary Roundtable on Indira Ghandi and forced conversion of her 3 children – if Tsu Koon cannot deliver “Performance Now”

Lim Kit Siang

The exasperation of the President of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism, Datuk A. Vaithilingam at the lack of action of the “Perrformance Now” Cabinet, and in particular the KPI Monitor Minister In the Prime Minister’s Department, Tan Sri Dr. Koh Tsu Koon over the injustices in the latest case of controversial and oppressive conversion is understandable.

As Vaithilingam lamented: :”Everyone is very sympathetic. There is no use being sympathetic if it is mere sympathy without action.”

We are giving Tsu Koon another week to deliver the “Performance Now” motto of the Najib government to end the injustices suffered by kindergarten teacher from Ipoh, M. Indira Ghandi, 35, and her three children, Tevi Darsiny, 12, Karan Dinish 11 and year-old baby Prasana Diksa or a Parliamentary Roundtable will be convened to demand justice for such victims of controversial and oppressive conversions.

In the past week, the three-man “Performance Now” Cabinet Committee, headed by Koh, to resolve the Indira Ghandi issue, has expanded to five Ministers – with the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department for Law and Parliament, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz and the Minister for Women, Family and Community Development, Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil joining the original three Ministers – Koh, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department on Islamic Affairs, Datuk Jamil Khir Baharom and the Human Resources Minister, Datuk Dr. S. Subramaniam.

However, there are no signs that the expansion of the three-man “Performance Now” Cabinet committee can contribute to any faster performance!

The immediate solution sought for the illegal and oppressive conversion of Indira Ghandi’s three children by her estranged husband K. Pathmanathan who had converted to Islam to become Ridzuan Abdullah are:

• Immediate return of baby Prasana Diksa to Indira;

• Iron-clad guarantees that her two children, Tevi Darsiny and Karan Dinesh can continue schooling without any interference with their religious rights from any quarter – very urgent as Tevi is preparing for her UPSR; and

• Cabinet stand that there should be no forcible and oppressive conversion of children below 18 to another religion unless both parents agree; and that no single parent from a civil marriage has the right to convert the children to another religion until the civil court decides on divorce, custody and alimony.

This is not the first time such heart-wrenching cases occurred where irresponsible people used religion to evade their family responsibilities and commitments.

There had been a long list of unresolved controversies since 2005, from Moorthy to Subashini, Rayappan and now Indira Ghandi.
A Parliamentary Roundtable will be the occasion to revisit the host of these unresolved cases.

The rights and wrongs are very simple and straightforward. Why is the Barisan Nasional government taking five long years and still unable to resolve the injustices caused by irresponsible conversion of non-Muslims who are married through civil laws to evade obligations contracted in civil law marriages?

This is now an acid test for the five-member Najib Cabinet committee whether “Performance Now” motto is an empty and meaningless slogan, which should be replaced with “No Performance Now”.

Hadi’s position at risk following unity government call

The Malaysian Insider

KOTA BARU, April 23 — PAS President Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s suggestion for the setting up of a combined or unity government with the federal government seems to be scuppering his chances of retaining the post at the PAS assembly in June.

The suggestion was strongly opposed by PAS spiritual leader Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat and had caused uneasiness among other PAS leaders and members as it was seen to be in conflict with the party’s principles and the decision made at last year’s PAS assembly in August.

Nik Aziz who was clearly against the idea viewed Hadi as having disregarded the party’s decision.

Hadi’s image was also tarnished after the Pakatan Rakyat Perak government headed by PAS, lost power, with Datuk Seri Muhammad Nizar Jamaluddin also discharged from serving as Mentri Besar.

They lost their majority in the state when two of their assemblymen from Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and another from DAP declared that they had become independent assemblymen and were supporting the Barisan Nasional (BN).

Nik Aziz does not want history to be repeated because in 1973, PAS was expelled from the alliance with Umno in Kelantan.

Many PAS leaders and members are worried that they may only be made use of by Umno in its effort to regain the support of the Malays.

There are PAS members who opine that the issues that have emerged will have a bearing on the outcome of the party’s divisional and national-level elections.

They are also worried that Hadi’s suggestion could result in PAS leaders finding a short-cut to high political posts through a combined government with BN.

Following the latest developments, Hadi finally, as reported by Harakah, the party organ, retracted his suggestion on the excuse that many did not understand the objective of setting up of what he called a “unity government”.

Although rumours have it that there are now two teams in the party – “Tok Guru Team” and “President Team” – and Nik Aziz has refuted it, he was nominated by Bukit Bintang PAS to contest the presidency to replace Hadi.

The new Bukit Bintang PAS division head Radhi Hashim said the decision to nominate Nik Aziz was due to his firmness in leading the party compared to Hadi.

The surprise decision, the first in the party, was achieved unanimously by the division’s 12 working committee members who were only appointed at its annual general meeting on Sunday at the Taman Melewar PAS training base, Gombak.

In fact, seven PAS divisions in the Federal Territories did not make any nominations during their respective general meetings for the three main posts, namely president, deputy president and vice-president. – Bernama