National Council of Professors fellow Azmi Hassan said PAS’s “extreme rhetoric” has led to a negative perception of the party in East Malaysia which it will find difficult to dispel.
He said parties in Sabah and Sarawak tend to prioritise their respective states’ best interests, particularly as regards their rights under the Malaysia Agreement 1963.
“What PAS is trying to do is create the perception that the party’s chapters in Sabah and Sarawak are making their own decisions, but it won’t make any difference due to the party’s extreme religious rhetoric and ideology,” he told FMT.
On Wednesday, PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man told the PAS Youth muktamar the party needs to adopt a different approach to win support among East Malaysian voters, given the different political environment there.
Acknowledging that the party lacks support in the two Borneon states, he said PAS would need to look beyond the existing political framework and build consensuses with NGOs and other groups.
However, University of Tasmania’s James Chin dismissed Tuan Ibrahim’s suggestion as “impossible to implement”. He said non-Muslims would not want to align themselves with PAS’s “fundamental aim of turning Malaysia into an Islamic state”.
“PAS will not compromise on their goal, and the non-Muslims (in Sabah and Sarawak) are not going to agree to it no matter how many NGOs and groups the party ropes in,” he said.
PAS needs strong local allies
Both Azmi and Chin said PAS would need help from local political parties to win over voters in East Malaysia. However, they played down the party’s prospects of ever finding allies willing to work with it.
“Sabah PAS is already less rhetorical compared to its counterparts in West Malaysia, but the existing stigma (that attaches to the party) makes it challenging for the party to gain any foothold in the state,” said Azmi.
Chin said the party has few supporters in East Malaysia, rendering its hopes of aligning with political parties there “unrealistic”.
“Votes for PAS in Sarawak are very few, and mostly come from this place called Beting Maro, while in Sabah, the votes are from Labuan and a few smaller places,” he said.
PAS did not contest in the 2020 Sabah state election. However, the party was given a seat in the state assembly with state PAS chief Aliakbar Gulasan one of six assemblyman nominated by the Sabah government.
Aliakbar’s appointment made him PAS’s first-ever representative in the Sabah legislative assembly.
Meanwhile, PAS’s Arifiriazul Paijo lost the Beting Maro seat to Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu’s Razaili Gapor in the 2021 Sarawak state election. The party does not have any representation in the Sarawak legislative assembly.