COMMENT | The best thing that can be said about PKR MP for Selayang William Leong's decision to resign from the party's political bureau over its continuing quest for an electoral pact with PAS is that his quitting will force a clarification of the whole issue of PKR's ties with the Islamic party.

Clarity on PKR's relationship with PAS is in lamentably short supply.

This is remarkable if for no other reason than there is no comparable dearth about the state of these ties from the PAS quarter. PAS regards PKR with contempt.

The Islamist party had been badmouthing PKR for more than a year now.

The reasons for this heightening aversion are that PKR had not been supportive of the PAS move to table Act 355 in parliament, coupled with PKR's support for Amanah's contesting the by-elections for the Kuala Kangsar and Sungai Besar parliamentary seats in June last year.

PAS considered both seats as theirs; they regarded as hostile PKR's support for Amanah.

As for PKR's distinct lack of enthusiasm for Act 355, which is aimed at further empowering syariah courts, the fact that PAS regards the Act as integral to its raison de'tre as an Islamist party made rupture with PKR inevitable.

PKR's support for Amanah in the by-elections of June 2016 only added insult to injury.

PAS was being logical by severing ties to PKR last May. However, their logic was cockeyed when they continued cohabiting with not only PKR but also with DAP in the Selangor state government.

PAS assumed the stance that they were being principled in their decisions to cut ties to DAP and break up with PKR. But cohabiting with Selangor after the divorce and separations from DAP and PKR made a travesty of their pretensions to principle.   

PAS had severed ties to DAP a year earlier to having doing so with PKR.

What made the severance worse was their choice not to reduce the hostile rhetoric it directed against DAP from well before the formal break in ties in June 2015.

DAP's unrelenting opposition to Act 355 had stuck in PAS' craw.

The resultant venom from PAS was unremitting. Inevitably, some of it spilled out on to flanks of DAP ally, PKR.

More PAS bile began to seep towards PKR when both DAP and PKR promptly decided to admit Amanah, the PAS splinter, into a new coalition, called Pakatan Harapan, formed in September 2015, within days of Amanah's emergence as a contender.

This genesis and evolution of the PAS break-ups with PKR and DAP did not occur in a vacuum. It was accompanied by growing convergence between Umno and PAS.

Umno's support of Act 355 lubricated its new cooperation with its long-time adversary. Then PAS began to emit signals it was going to go it alone in the next general election (GE14).

This is what Umno wants: the splitting of the opposition votes between Harapan and solo-going PAS in GE14.

Slap in the face

In Malaysian electoral history, three-cornered fights have redounded to the advantage of the ruling Umno-BN.

No matter which way PAS tries to justify its policy of going-it-alone for GE14, it can't hide the cynicism of its objective which is to guarantee an Umno-BN victory in the polls by splitting the votes for the opposition.

Earlier this week, Selangor PAS announced it was going to contest 42 of the 56 state seats in Selangor.

Among these are the ones held by PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail and deputy president Azmin Ali, who happens to the party's staunchest believer of the necessity of an electoral pact with PAS.

Whether Azmin will infer from this disclosure that he is on a hiding to nothing in the quest for a pact with PAS is not certain.

It was Anwar Ibrahim's damaging folly to have made Azmin dependent on PAS support to become menteri besar of Selangor in September 2014, following the prolonged crisis triggered by incumbent Khalid Ibrahim's refusal to relinquish the post.

Azmin suavely ghosted through a gap that opened up for him between Anwar's insistence on his wife Wan Azizah being the MB and PAS' opposition to the proposition and the Selangor palace's distaste for it.

Azmin's snagging the post was a piece of the conjuror's art. He cannot replicate that sorcery with a potentially treacherous ally like PAS.

This is the message of Leong's resignation and willingness to end his political career by not going for a third term as MP for Selayang.

It makes the point that PKR will suffer a suicidal loss of essence by continuing to court a party for whom pretension matters more than principle.

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.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.