By Terence Netto
Following his appointment as Perikatan Nasional chairman in mid-February, Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar was always going to have a hard time striking the appropriate rhetorical notes.
Such notes, of course, would require the Terengganu menteri besar to tack to the middle rather than tread the pathways that would certify him as a Malay and Muslim right-winger.
He appropriately did so earlier this month in a Facebook posting that described Malaysia’s multiracial society as “an incomparable blessing from God.”
That was a refreshingly startling thing to say, coming from a leader of PAS, a party seen as rigidly ideological.
Samsuri said further that all politicians must remember that they are to lead all Malaysians, not just the Malays or any particular community.
This view is something that would be difficult to reconcile with the requirement that a leader would have to be Muslim in order to lead PAS, the largest party with 43 seats in the Dewan Rakyat.
If Samsuri were to become prime minister of Malaysia, he would have to be walking on egg shells to bear in mind that he is a leader for all Malaysians.
Readers of Samsuri’s Facebook posting gained almost an immediate intimation of the difficulty of that task when PAS supremo Hadi Awang put up a Facebook posting in which he beckoned Umno to “return to the right path.”
What would that entail for Umno?
Umno would have to, according to Hadi, stop allying with “liberal” PKR and “extremely secular” DAP.
These days, critics of PKR and DAP would be hesitant to describe the former as liberal and the latter as extremely secular.
Their criticisms are why both parties are in trouble with their supporters for tardiness in implementing political and economic reform that both have been fighting for since the late 1990s.
Broadly, critics blame Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim for the lackadaisical pace of the reformasi programme.
It was sustained public support for that programme that brought PKR and DAP to being in the driver’s seat in the negotiations among major parties to form the unity government led by Anwar in November 2022, after GE15 resulted in a hung parliament.
Now PKR and DAP, as part of the Pakatan Harapan grouping, are in trouble with their supporters for the lethargic pace of reform after three and a half years as part of the Madani government.
A leader of the stature of Hadi who terms PKR as unpalatably “liberal” and DAP as “extremely secular” would be at odds with the throng of reformasi supporters who see nothing indefensibly liberal and extremely secular with the reformasi programme.
In short, it may be that Hadi Awang is out of sorts with reformasi.
That of course raises the question of whether Samsuri is also in the same situation.
It is understandable that Samsuri, wanting to tread close to the centrist positions of somebody who aspires to be prime minister of Malaysia, would want to sound the middle octaves.
But he has his boss in PAS to contend with. That’s no easy thing.
Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.