COMMENT Leaders of PKR and PAS met yesterday, ostensibly to chart new ground for a second try at forming an opposition alliance.

The first try at opposition unity - Pakatan Rakyat - expired unceremoniously in June after a seven-year existence its supporters felt was proof that politics is the theatre of the possible though sceptics scoffed that it was evidence, rather, that a quest for power can foster thinking that ideological differences ought to matter little when facing a common adversary.

After yesterday’s pow-wow, one attendee, PAS secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan, ( photo ) emerged to say that PAS was still in the opposition front .

This was about as helpful as would be if one of several groups fighting the Syrian government were to emerge from a round of intra-rebel discussions to say that it was still in the opposition front against Bashar Assad.

The Malaysian and Syrian oppositionist predicaments are not dissimilar: there’s unanimity that the powers-that-be should go, but there is no consensus on what the ideological bearings of the replacement should be.

Both PKR and PAS think that mutual distaste for a common adversary in Umno-BN can offset what ideological divergences there are between the two.

Further, both like to pretend that real divergences between PAS and prospective allies in the opposition ranks can be overcome by a mutuality of distaste for Umno-BN.

This is in spite of the fact that events of the last two years have confirmed that repugnance towards Umno-BN is no guarantee of unity among parties lined up against the ruling coalition.

In fact, sometimes Umno’s shrewd manipulation of PAS can lead to the latter thinking that there’s more in common between the two than can be surmised from appearances.

By now, however, opposition supporters are past the point where they can be deceived by appearances.

For example, they now know that the slogan used by PAS at the last general election, ‘PAS for all’, is just that - rhetoric and not reality.

The thing that troubles is why when the realism that ideology matters has seeped into the consciousness of many supporters of the opposition, PKR continues to think that it can ignore ideology’s potential impact on a supposed ally’s political stance in times of stress.

A veneer and not the actual thing

PAS is a theocratic party and by its determination to introduce hudud in Kelantan, it cannot be said of the party that its theocratic leanings are a veneer and not the actual thing - a belief that seventh century Medina is a model for contemporary government and daily practice.

PKR, as far as can be inferred, is a liberal democratic party despite what its critics say about it which is that it is little more than a political vehicle for aspirations of the Anwar Ibrahim family.

By its keenness to see commonalities with PAS where there is little basis on which to sustain such a pose, PKR is calling attention to a void in ideology that is perhaps the reason for its lack of appreciation of what an ideology - either liberal democratic or theocratic - can do to a party.

A lack of realism about matters like this foments a laisser faire attitude that was the cause of the prolonged crisis last year that besieged Pakatan Rakyat over the question of whether Khalid Ibrahim should be replaced as Selangor menteri besar and, if so, by whom.

By April 2013, it was known to higher-ups in PKR that PAS was not in favor of Anwar as PM-designate of Pakatan if the opposition coalition emerged victorious in Election 2013.

By June 2014, it was PKR’s proposition that not only Khalid be replaced as Selangor menteri besar but that the replacement should be Anwar’s wife, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

Only someone who is cavalier about the impact of ideology would have extrapolated from a PAS demurral to an Anwar premiership possible support by the party for an Azizah MB-ship for Selangor.

PAS was opposed to the proposition and Pakatan was in protracted crisis as a result and was headed for the break-up that eventuated a year later.

Now PKR, in particular, wants to put back the pieces but it would not do to pretend that ideology matters little.

A refusal to take in that reality bodes ill for all concerned.

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.