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88 Johan Saravanamuttu

A series of political events eventually led to the rst rebooting of the
coalition pact that had been the BA as PR to contest the 2008 election. e
PR coalition achieved a critical change in 2008, reinforced in 2013, namely,
the denial of BN’s two-thirds parliamentary majority. PR broke up in 2015,
with the departure of PAS yet again, but that shift led to the extraordinary
series of events culminating in the formation of Pakatan Harapan (PH),
which perhaps could be conceived of as a rebooting of Pakatan Rakyat. A brief
recounting of the developments leading to the breakup of PR is germane for
comprehending the liminal nature of opposition coalition politics in Malaysia
and why institutional and programmatic continuity is crucial to successful
political coalitions. 6
Politicking within the Pakatan alliance and other events linked to PAS
and its growing spat with the DAP over hudud legislation, or Islamic criminal
law, led to the formal breakup of the Opposition alliance in June 2015. First,
a major internal PKR feud led to the so-called ‘Kajang move’, which saw
Anwar’s wife and PKR leader, Wan Azizah Ismail, elected to a Selangor state
seat. is event left the PKR fairly intact, if still split by factionalism. ings
7
started unravelling for the PR when PAS indicated its intention in April 2014
to revive earlier e orts to implement hudud in Kelantan. PAS planned to
introduce enabling legislation for hudud in Parliament. To aggravate matters,
PAS sought the cooperation of the Najib government, which approved the
setting up of a national-level technical committee, including PAS members,
to study the long-term feasibility of hudud. e enabling legislation known
as RUU355 (Act 355) was tabled in parliament in 2016 and amended that
November. However, the controversial bill failed to see passage in the last
sitting of parliament in 2018, which could be seen as a duplicitous tactic by
BN to hurt PAS before GE14 ( e Star 2018). 8
Matters came to a head at the 61st PAS Muktamar (party congress), held
from 3–6 June 2015. Abdul Hadi Awang retained the president’s post easily
despite a challenge from a relatively unknown opponent, and candidates
of the ulama group won all major o ces except for one. PAS moderates or
‘progressives’ were soundly defeated; in particular, Mohamad (Mat) Sabu
lost the deputy presidency to Tuan Ibrahim, and others, like Husam Musa,
Sallehudin Ayub, Dzulki i Ahmad, and Khalid Samad, failed to retain or win
any post. It was a devastating defeat for the ‘Erdogans’ who had advocated
9
strong Pakatan collaboration. Worse was to come for the fate of the opposition
coalition when the Ulama Council passed a motion to sever ties with the DAP.
In the aftermath of these results and the action of the Ulama Council, DAP
Secretary General Lim Guan Eng announced on 16 June, after a meeting of
the party’s central committee, that the PR coalition was formally dead. 10

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