COMMENT The latest round of public pronouncements by PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang served only to confirm that an Islamist party led by him has no place in a fledgling Pakatan 2.0.

Hadi is reported to have told the weekend edition of Utusan Malaysia - admittedly, a not very reliable conduit for the thoughts of the head of a party that’s now regarded as a manipulable rival by the paper’s political owners - that PAS would be fielding candidates from its Supporters Congress in non-Muslim majority seats.

This translates as PAS will field Chinese candidates in DAP-held seats, which must be music to Utusan’s patron’s (Umno) ears.

“The party will not hesitate to look deeply into non-Muslim candidates representing the party in the coming general election. PAS central is studying the matter,” Hadi was quoted by Mingguan Malaysia as saying in its edition last Sunday.

There’s probably no point in telling Hadi that he’d be wasting his time: there would be no credible Chinese candidates available for PAS to field against the DAP in the latter’s strongholds.

The only ones PAS could find would be of the type and calibre of Paul Low ( photo ), the former Transparency International-Malaysia chair and, presently, apologist-in-chief in the government of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

The term “useful idiots” entered political parlance when the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, deployed it to describe the gullible who are duped into saying good things about despicable regimes.

The epithet has since become a devastating putdown of people who in periods of political transition can be enticed to say laudatory things, upon being given prominent posts in regimes that the majority of the people want to get rid off.

Hadi makes it sound like PAS can find among its Supporters Congress non-Muslim candidates of calibre to stand in Chinese majority seats in the next general election (GE14).

The truth is more nearly that PAS will be scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with such candidates.

The word on the grapevine is that several activists in the Supporters Congress have already made the move to the NGO, Gerakan Harapan Baru, the precursor of Parti Amanah Negara (PAN), the soon-to-be political vehicle for the progressives who are on the way out of PAS.

The vehicle is slated to be launched on Malaysia Day - Sept 16.

Direct membership to non-Muslims a radical change

Comprehensively defeated by the conservatives at the elective PAS muktamar in June, the progressives have been moving steadily towards the purpose of forming a new and inclusive Islamist party that will offer direct membership to non-Muslims.

This offer is a radical change from what members of the Supporters Congress in PAS enjoy, which is participation in PAS politics, including being fielded as candidates in general elections, but without benefit of direct membership in the party, an exclusion that is ultimately discriminatory.

These non-Muslim members won’t have to endure such conditions in PAN and so Hadi’s talk that PAS can dredge up candidates of calibre in its Supporters Congress is about as credible as Najib’s argument that barring a few malcontents like Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Muhyiddin Yassin, the rank and file among Umno’s 3.2 million members support the prime minister and are satisfied with his explanations of his role in the festering 1MDB affair.

Cognitive dissonance - believing, earnestly and at the same time, contradictory ideas - afflicts probably everyone; it’s so widespread a disorder that you would think that it is not a debility but a normal accommodation to political ambiguities.

However, the cognitive dissonance that afflicts Hadi and PAS are the sort that induce vertigo: that his party can implement hudud in Kelantan and still be a member of the opposition coalition; cut ties to the DAP and yet not withdraw from the governing coalitions in Penang and Selangor; support the continuance in office of PM Najib and still regard itself as an opposition party; contest DAP-held seats in GE14 and not be viewed as fifth columnists among oppositionists; and have a president and a spiritual leader who are patently pro-Umno and yet have in the party deputy president's chair somebody who is transparently oppositionist.

Cognitive dissonance? This sounds more like cognitive cacophony.

Little wonder anyone can plausibly entertain the hope that PAS can be part of what could turn out to be Pakatan Rakyat 2.0, a re-chartered and re-configured version of the earlier, now defunct first edition.

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.