Former Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) secretary-general S Arutchelvan has rubbished claims by a number of opposition leaders that the party does not agree with Pakatan Rakyat’s Common Policy Framework.

He said that not only that the party subscribes to the opposition’s platform, it has also endorsed it in its 2013 election manifesto.

“So this story about us not agreeing to the common policy is totally false. I think (Serdang MP) Ong Kian Ming and (Shah Alam MP) Khalid Samad are really malicious and manipulative,” he told Malaysiakini when contacted yesterday.

Yesterday, Ong and Khalid told Malaysiakini that PSM was not invited to join the new opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan, because it uses the same Common Policy Framework and principles of the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat coalition.

They said that PSM does not agree with a core part of the framework, which was to uphold Article 153 of the federal constitution that deals with the special position of the bumiputera.

Since Pakatan Harapan uses the same framework, it was assumed that PSM would not agree to it and thus it was not invited to the roundtable discussions on Tuesday that led to Pakatan Harapan’s formation.

However according to Arutchelvan, the issue on Article 153 of the federal constitution was never discussed with PSM, and yesterday was the first time he has heard of a dispute over it.

‘They never got back to us’

Arutchelvan explained that prior to the 13th general election when he was PSM’s secretary-general, the Pakatan Rakyat secretariat had written to the party asking whether PSM supports Pakatan Rakyat’s policies.

He said the party had asked in response to see the policies and whether it is the same as Pakatan Rakyat’s ‘Buku Jingga’ (orange book), and the reply was in the affirmative.

“They responded ‘yes’, and we said, ‘Yes, we have already supported ‘Buku Jingga’. In fact in our manifesto, we mentioned that - that we support ‘Buku Jingga’,” he said.

An excerpt of page 23 of PSM’s 2013 election manifesto reads: “PSM endorsed PR’s Manifesto and Buku Jingga. PSM will also retain its own manifesto.”

However, Arutchelvan, who is a member of the party’s central committee, said that was the last time he heard of the matter.

“The truth is that they never got back to us, so now I don’t know where they came up with this story that there was disagreement on the common policy,” he said.