COMMENT Are we seeing the beginnings of verbal fisticuffs between PKR and its ertswhile ally PAS over what the latter thinks about the former's collaboration with Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah)?

PAS has complained about PKR's presence at a recent Amanah gathering in Kelantan, claiming the presence was unhelpful towards the promotion of understanding between the two parties.

PKR has responded by saying PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang's recent appearances with Umno chief Najib Abdul Razak had not elicited any public demurral from them. So what's the beef, asks PKR of PAS.

On the surface, the tiff looks fairly innocuous. But it could escalate if Amanah's forays into PAS redoubts in Kelantan continue.

These are certain to continue. In this event, PKR cannot remain aloof and PAS, consequently, cannot confine itself to mild remonstrances and plain spoken rebuffs of them by PKR.

Then, it would be hard to see how the two parties' pretence that their cooperation can subsist in spite of potentially conflictual ties to mutual adversaries.

Once Amanah came into the picture, the relationship between PKR and PAS was no longer viable, but don't tell that to PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli and Selangor Menteri Besar Azmin Ali .

Both persist in the delusion the relationship is feasible, that they can square the circle whereby PKR can keep PAS within a tentative embrace while maintaining good relations with not only Amanah, which PAS excoriates as traitors , but also with DAP, which the Islamic party denounces as ingrates.

True, politics is the art of the possible, but only if the possible is also the desirable.

Generally speaking, the agenda of Pakatan Harapan - the fledgling opposition coalition that groups PKR, DAP and Amanah - is progressivist in its outlook.

It has to be if it is going to succeed at its constituents' avowed goal of wide-ranging political and economic reform of the current status quo in Malaysia.

In contrast, PAS - in wanting to impose hudud in Kelantan - is obscurantist.

Unsustainable pretence

That was the main reason for the breakup of Pakatan Rakyat, Harapan's predecessor, which ceased to exist last June after a tantalising, if tenuous, six-year existence (2008 to 2014).

After Pakatan Rakyat's breakup, both PAS and PKR pretended there need not be any implications for their bilateral ties even though PAS' hostility towards DAP swiftly rose to a height greater than even the periods when PAS had exchanged hostilities with Umno.

But after PAS' splinter, Amanah, was formed last September that pretence was not sustainable because of the speed with which Amanah, PKR and DAP combined to form a new opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan.

PAS, given mounting contumely for DAP and contempt for Amanah, declined PKR's invitation to join Harapan.

Sceptics felt Harapan's gestation was needlessly forced and the partners were being naive in ignoring the lessons of Pakatan Rakyat's failure.

The only lesson that needed to be learned was that a coalition between ideologically contrarian parties cannot long endure.

What objections DAP could possibly entertain about Amanah's Islamist leanings were dispelled when the latter's chief, Mohamad Sabu, said that on the issue of hudud , the nascent political entity would base its stand on the consensus within Harapan.

That stance removed a huge bump on the road to intra-coalition understanding and harmony.

Having neatly disposed of that hump, the next obvious obstacle to plain sailing within Harapan was the persistence of PKR's belief that its ties to PAS can be sustained, not only in Selangor where both cohabit as partners in the ruling coalition, but also elsewhere.

It is in PKR's and PAS' interest to sustain the cohabitation in Selangor but for the rest of the country, sustenance would depend on a moderation of the PAS attitude to Amanah and DAP.

That mellowing is not likely to happen, which leaves the longer term prospects for PAS-PKR ties in limbo.

The tiff between the two over PKR's presence at an Amanah foray into Kelantan is the opening volley in what is likely to develop into an open breach.

One can expect that PAS would explain its leader's appearances with Najib and its stated purpose of advising Umno as efforts to cooperate with anybody in promoting Islam.

Apropos of which PKR should remind PAS, pace Dr Samuel Johnson's aphorism about patriotism, that religion can sometimes be the last refuge of imposters.

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.