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Hasan Ali was relieved from his position as the head of PAS Selangor last June for various reasons. Part of it was his inclination to side with UMNO goons despite his position as the number one man in PAS Selangor. Under his EXCO portfolio, several projects were awarded to UMNO goons, reason were they are much more capable than any of Pakatan's companies. Loads of crap.
Malaysia is plagued by the 'Ali Problem'. We have Ali Baba businessmen - Umno Malays who help Chinese cronies to get rich. Then there are followers of Ali, the Shi-ites being arrested for spreading Islam and Ibrahim Ali, Dr Mahathir's spanner-in-the-works to undermine Najib and bring him down.
Now, we have Hasan Ali (regarded by many as Umno's Trojan Horse in Pakatan, the man who is rooting for the Umno-PAS 'Malay unity' talk) whose role in the JAIS raid of DUMC could be the undoing of PAS. Upon closer analysis, one wonders of the possibility of it being an Umno conspiracy to get PAS to do something stupid that will hurt Pakatan. A case of history being repeated?
Down Memory Lane
After the 1999 general election, the then Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad declared that since Malaysia was already an Islamic country, PAS was not needed. He argued that Umno was then the largest Islamic party in the world. PAS, he claimed, was then only a quarter or less the size of Umno in terms of membership. With that, the one-upmanship tussle between PAS and UMNO began.
From thence, Dr Mahathir goaded PAS by saying that the Islamic party promised all sorts of things before the elections, but now that they were running two states, Kelantan and Terengganu, they still had not delivered on their promises. He questioned, "Where is the promise of Islamic laws?”
PAS fell into the trap. Without the consensus of its other three coalition partners in Barisan Alternatif (PKN, DAP and PRM), PAS unilaterally announced that the Terengganu state government was going to introduce Islamic laws in the state. Following that, PAS launched its Islamic State Document (ISD) and introduced Islamic laws in the Terengganu State Assembly and that was the beginning of the end for the opposition coalition.
Subsequently, DAP distanced itself from the ISD by leaving the opposition coalition and embarking on a ‘No to Islamic State’ campaign. That had a devastating effect on the 2004 General Elections. PAS paid a very high price for that move.
Then, PAS was under pressure. They had been called 'liars' and were accused of cheating the voters by not delivering its election promise. If they had not done what they did then, the rural electorate would have swallowed the Umno propaganda hook, line and sinker and all would have been lost. So it tried to deliver what it had been mandated to do by the voters who voted for it. And PAS did just that. It fulfilled its election promise.
Fortunately for us, since the 2004 general election, when PAS lost Terengganu, almost lost Kelantan, and saw its 27 Parliament seats reduced to just nine, PAS has stopped talking about the ISD. DAP knows this. To PAS, ISD is an embarrassing mistake that is history. Unfortunately, some resurrect this ISD to stigmatize the head of what could be the most successful and powerful opposition party.
Since PAS is gaining ground not just among Malays, but non-Malays as well, a spanner has to be thrown into the works - this time under the guise of the JAIS raid of DUMC. If history is repeated and they naively react to the church in an unfavourable manner, for sure they would suffer backlash from the voters in the next GE.
The Hasan Ali Factor
In September 2009, Hassan Ali plunged the Pakatan Rakyat into controversy with Muslim voters by unilaterally calling for a ban on beer sales.
Then he stepped on the toes of his colleagues in the Selangor state executive council by deliberately taking aim at non-Malay colleagues such as Ronnie Liu and Teng Chang Khim. According to party insiders, he has been intentionally spinning issues he has against them with a Chinese versus Malay-dominance twist.
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