BA and BN also false choices
As PAS leads Barisan Alternatif as Umno does Barisan Nasional, a logical extension of Kit Siang's statement above is that BA and BN are also false choices.
In spite of that, the DAP will negotiate "an electoral understanding" with BA for the next general elections (DAP willing to 'negotiate' with BA says Kerk).
According to Kit Siang, "Although the DAP and PAS have fundamental differences over the Islamic state issue, this should not prevent the DAP from co-operating with Barisan Alternatif for the elusive goal to break the political hegemony of the Barisan Nasional by depriving its two-thirds parliamentary majority for the first time in Malaysian electoral history".
The calculation appears to be that when BN is denied its two-thirds parliamentary majority, Umno cannot implement its own version of the Islamic state and neither can PAS, since although it may have grown stronger with DAP's help, it cannot however be strong enough to form a government through BA to implement its version of the Islamic state. This is especially so when the DAP may have grown also stronger riding on the cooperation with other BA allies.
If that were the strategic policy of DAP to impede Islamisation of the secular 1957 secular constitution by both Umno and PAS, it is smacked with duplicitous opportunism.
Why should God-fearing PAS cooperate and be used by 'secular' DAP in this manner to obstruct the establishment of His state — whether from PAS' perspective, its original version or even its impostor by Umno? Or is PAS together with other fence sitters like Keadilan and PRM still willing to collaborate with the 'devil' (whose opposition to His plans was already openly declared by its earlier exit from BA) as long as it realises their ultimate goal?
It appears that no principle is sacrosanct except that of 'use and be used'.
My conclusion then is that politicians, whether secular as those in DAP or religious as those in PAS, are the same everywhere and no better in moral terms than those in the BN accused against.
Politicians will promise to build bridges even where there are no streams, and where streams do exist and planks are laid across, they have no qualms to remove the very planks that help them cross, once their purpose has been served.
No wonder ex-president Ronald Reagan was quoted in the Observer May 13, 1979 to have said, "I used to say that politics was the second lowest profession as I have come to know that it bears a great similarity to the first".
