COMMENT Is PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man going solo or is he making a much-needed course correction for the party?

Tuan Ibrahim has announced that PAS would support a no-confidence motion against the government at the next sitting of Parliament.

The announced stance must come as a surprise to observers of the gyrations of his party’s president, Abdul Hadi Awang, and its spiritual leader, Dr Haron Din.

Both have been cosying up to Umno president and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak over the past months when revelations about sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB, reached a pitch of intensity seldom seen in the history of past scandals affecting the ruling government.    

Just when BN Backbenchers Club chairperson Shahrir Samad appeared confident that the public had accepted the Najib administration's explanations on the scandal-plagued 1MDB and DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang was fairly certain that Hadi Awang would foil a no-confidence motion against the prime minister,  PAS’ Tuan brahim Tuan Man has weighed-in on the debate.

The surprise is that his and his party’s stance is at odds with the thrust of the president’s and its spiritual leader’s tilt toward Najib.

A relieved PM went to the extent of publicly thanking the two leaders for their understanding and support.

As a circling of the Umno-BN wagons took place, speculation among the opposition revolved around the question of how to remove the scandal-besieged PM.

Inevitably, it centred around the possibility of a no-confidence motion in Parliament but the obstacles to this were formidable and included an obstructive speaker, insufficient votes to carry the motion, and a PAS representation, led by Hadi, that would opt for neutrality if not actually support the PM.

But now Tuan Ibrahim has signalled that the Islamic party is not such a lost cause, after all, where the core ideals of the reformasi movement, 17 years old next month, are concerned.

Judging from his latest pronouncement, PAS is holding steady to at least one plank of the three - against corruption, cronyism and nepotism - that had animated the reform movement catalysed by the travails of Anwar Ibrahim.

Tuan Ibrahim, the cleric from Pahang who in spite of being allied to the conservative flank of his party retains a modestly independent disposition, has described the explanations offered by the government on the shenanigans surrounding 1MDB as so much mumbo-jumbo.

Accordingly, he said his party would support a motion of no-confidence in Parliament against the government.

At this stage of his president Hadi’s and spiritual leader Haron’s dalliance with Najib, Tuan Ibrahim’s iteration of his party’s stance on a no-confidence motion would be the same as the case if Iranian president Hassan Rouhani were to repudiate a policy position laid down by spiritual leader Ali Khamenei.

Splash of cold water on Shahrir

Besides being at variance to Hadi’s and Haron’s cosying up to Najib, Tuan Ibrahim’s stance is a splash of cold water on Shahrir, who when he said that the public accepts the government’s explanation , must have had Hadi’s and Haron’s extenuations on behalf of Najib on the 1MDB affair.

Likewise, Tuan Ibrahim’s rationale tethers on the waywardness of Hadi and Haron must give pause to DAP adviser Kit Siang whose laments on Hadi’s coddling of Najib only serves to underline the extent of the delusion behind the opposition-supporting public’s rooting for PAS at the last general election.

The  party’s slogan, ‘PAS for All’, on which it had campaigned at the last polls, must in the wake of Hadi’s and Haron’s recent warming of ties to Najib, seem a chimaera just as the Islamic State’s initial sweep of the battlefields in northern Syria and western Iraq was to Najib, who hailed their successes, only to recant them shortly afterwards.

Now we have the speculation of an Umno MP that the RM2.6 billion that was transferred  to the PM’s personal bank account just before the general election in May 2013, allegedly funds from 1MDB, was actually gratitude from a Middle Eastern potentate for Najib’s support for those under attack by the murderous hordes of the Islamic State.

Whether Tuan Ibrahim is going solo or he is making a welcome course correction for PAS will be determined in the days leading up to the Parliament’s sitting in October.

Suffice, on the 1MDB issue, the opposition is not in the disarray it was a year ago when the issue of whether to replace Khalid Ibrahim as menteri besar of Selangor and, if so, who to supplant him with roiled Pakatan Rakyat and led to its eventual dissolution over the matter of hudud implementation in Kelantan.

A year does make a lot of difference in politics.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.