More than meets the eye to Harakah’s editorial woes

By Pauline Wong

Is it really PAS for all? Is its factionalism spilling over? If a game ofmusical chairs happened among the chief executives of any company (or any government-owned ‘private’ investment fund for that matter), it is usually enough to send everyone into a tailspin.
Investors flee, shares drop, and overall, the company suffers a reputation hit from which it may never recover.

So when PAS party organ Harakah saw two editors (in different positions) removed – and one more asked to leave- in a short span of just a few months, one should already hear the warning bells in the air. 

This is because — to borrow irreverently from a certain BN component party’s misguided GE13 slogan— “what happens to Harakah, happens to PAS”.

It is an open secret that PAS finds itself in its weakest position yet after the 13th General Elections in May 2013, where it won only 21 out of 73 seats contested.

That, and the two factions within PAS — the ulama (conservatives) and the professionals (progressives) — appear to be at loggerheads all the time, be it on the issues of hudud punishment or banning alcohol and Valentine’s Day. 

So when the ulama faction allegedly pressured Harakah’s editor Ahmad Lutfi Othman to resign due to ‘health reasons’, it should not be taken lightly — if indeed the allegations are true.

Lutfi is not the first of Harakah’s key editorial staff that has been asked to leave, however. Two others, Tarmizi Md Jam and Roslan Hamid were also axed late last year, allegedly for being responsible for running articles which were less than complimentary of the ulama faction.

One of these articles was written by author Che Samsudin Othman, popularly known as Dinsman, titled: ‘Kepimpinan ulama dan salah faham mengenainya’ (The ulama leadership and its misconceptions).

Incidentally, Dinsmans’ column on Harakah was also terminated recently.

In a commentary on The Malaysian Insider, Dinsman wrote that PAS now fashions itself as beyond reproach.

“The leadership in PAS have become unable to withstand criticism. They immediately react and use any power it has to curb this criticism. I used to think only the late Kedah Mentri Besar Azizan Razak was like that, but it turns out that many of the ulama in PAS are like that now,” he wrote.

He went on to say that he had merely criticised those among the ulama who “do not behave like ulama” and end up tarnishing the image of a religious leader. 

Shah Alam MP and PAS central committee member Khalid Samad once wrote that there is even a faction within the ulama faction who want to break away from Pakatan.

His blog posting in September warned of this ‘chauvinistic’ group of ulama who have divided PAS like never before, who will employ a strategy of promoting ulama leadership until they cannot be challenged and to attack the pro-Pakatan and professional factions. 

Is the muzzling of PAS’s party organ a sign of the strengthening of this faction and its ideals? 

More than meets the eye to Harakah’s editorial woes

The answer to this is not so easily found. Parit Buntar MP Mujahid Yusof Rawa, when contacted, refrained from commenting on this issue.

“It is a management issue and we are waiting for the facts, otherwise I would be delving into the realm of the speculative,” he briefly told The Rocket. 

However, is this issue really so simple as a battle between two factions to gain control?

Political analyst Dr Wong Chin Huat in a column in The Nut Graph more than five years ago did not think so. At that time, he said that PAS is not so much divided into ‘ulama’ versus ‘professionals’, but into those who prescribe to the red-ocean and blue-ocean strategies. 

“The current  formation of PAS’s factions is informed by the use of business buzzwords, the “blue ocean” and “red ocean” strategies. A “red ocean” refers to the crowded, known market where cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody, or red. In contrast, a blue ocean is the unknown marketplace, in which rules of the game are waiting to be set, and which provides ample opportunities for growth,” he said. 

In his analysis he says that the ‘colours’ within the PAS factions vary from ‘red’ to ‘true blue’, and PAS leaders fall within these various spectrums depending on what the ‘game’ is in the constituency — is it the Malay-Muslim game or the multi-ethnic game? 

Neither side can embrace one ideal too completely, lest they lose the support of those of other ideals, and neither side can reach the end-game of Putrajaya without the other; making the factions far more nuanced than meets the eye.

Fast forward five years to today and the perennial question of “Who is PAS?” crops up again. 

This time, PAS and Pakatan Rakyat must dig deep and find answers, or the dismissal of one editor could mean the ‘dismissal’ of the party by a significant bloc of voters. -The Rocket