COMMENT Nobody would begrudge Mohamad Sabu taking justifiable pride in his election as PAS deputy president but he should beware of being borne aloft by the optimism about Pakatan Rakyat’s electoral prospects his victory at his party’s muktamar last weekend has generated.

True, the popular PAS orator, who cut a rather forlorn figure these last three years after failing narrowly to win the Kuala Terengganu parliamentary seat in the March 2008 general election, has made an exhilarating comeback to the front benches of national politics by emerging as the PAS No 2.

NONEFor a popular politician like Mohamad to have failed to make it in Kuala Terengganu during the tsunami of three years back, albeit against a formidable Umno candidate, and to have been bypassed as the PAS choice for the same seat when it became vacant in January 2009, must have been frustrating indeed.

But stalwart party man that he is, Mat Sabu, as he is popularly known, showed what mettle he is made of by taking the rough with the smooth in stride.

Even defeat in a three-cornered fight for the PAS deputy presidency in June 2009 failed to dent the man’s unflagging commitment.

And now that he has emerged near the top of the greasy pole in his party, it is understandable he blows his horn a wee bit.

But puffery such as saying that if he stands in Bukit Bintang in the general elections he could win is akin to getting him airborne to heights sobriety would recommend he not go at this point.

Not that there is serious doubt Mat Sabu lacks the cross-racial appeal that would make him a viable candidate in urban constituencies with large numbers of non-Malay voters.

After compatriot Mohamed Nizar Jamaluddin, Mat Sabu is probably the most popular PAS leader among non-Muslims voters - his oratorical skills and amiable rotundity dovetailing nicely to project him as a politician of broad appeal.

Counting chickens before they are hatched
 
But to speak at this stage of a reallocation of seats to suit the cross-racial appeal of certain candidates from Pakatan Rakyat component parties is to set the cat among the canaries: before the bird of Putrajaya is in hand, some Pakatan politicians seem to be looking for the right to permanent residence.

This is presumption comparable to that displayed by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim vis-a-vis ‘September 16’ three years ago. In colloquial terms, it’s counting the chickens before they are hatched.
 
NONEMat Sabu ought not to replicate Anwar’s presumption. He has been proven right about his skepticism on Anwar’s ability to reform Umno from within.

In April 1982, Abim stawart, Mat Sabu, disagreed with Anwar’s decision to leave the Abim presidency to join Umno. A disappointed Sabu then joined PAS and became a frequent critic of Anwar on the PAS circuit, even as the latter rose like a meteor in his adopted party.

But in the last 13 years, Mat Sabu shifted from critic to sympathiser at the travails of Anwar as he was humiliated and traduced by Umno.

Though still ambivalent towards Pakatan’s putative supremo, Mat Sabu has taken due note of the worthiness of Anwar’s struggles and the support that has drawn from the public.

In other words, in Mat Sabu’s worldview, there is a healthy preference for the empirical over dogma, an attractive quality in a leader from a party with theocratic leanings.

Revisiting the Comman Policy Framework

It is that preference for what works in the world of politics that makes Mat Sabu particularly suited to taking up where Zaid Ibrahim, misguided by irrational exuberance into thinking that he could lead PKR, left off six months ago - the Common Policy Framework for Pakatan.

The CPF was something Zaid was working on from the time he joined PKR in mid-2009 till he allowed himself to be run off-course by untoward ambition late last year.

Since then the CPF has suffered from benign neglect.

NONEMat Sabu, with his grassroots popularity, his non-confrontational ways, his capacity to understand that Pakatan is a coalition whose differing ideologies must be straddled and coaxed to move in a redemptive direction for the rescue of the Malaysian nation from the depredations of Umno-BN, is suited for the task of translating the CPF into a compelling charter.

That task, if addressed well, would be more constructive for Mat Sabu’s future and Pakatan’s viability.

In this moment of his uplifting triumph in PAS, after a few puffs of self-satisfaction, Mat Sabu should quickly get down to the brass tacks of coalition-building rather than engage with the hypothetical business of seat reallocations.

The chips in the latter matter would more easily fall into place after the voters know what they would be getting from Pakatan once the CPF becomes a binding charter among the coalition.

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.