Kelantan Mentri Besar Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat is supposed to be the conscience of PAS, yet he dismissed Dr Chen Man Hin as "not someone important".

Nik Aziz and Chen are both party veterans, old men acting as spiritual guides of their respective parties, advisers, etc. So if Chen Man Hin is unimportant, so too is Nik Aziz.

Now look at what Nik Aziz admitted in the AFP report ('Nik Aziz wants God-fearing nation', Sept 11). He wants the whole country to be God-fearing. In practice what this means is that he wants all Malaysians to be PAS-fearing.

This concentration of power must not happen if Malaysians truly value democracy. Just as other countries wisely separate "church from state", we must also do likewise and separate "mosque from state" and "temple from state". The opposition now claims to be against the undemocratic concentration of power like a dictatorship. The worst dictatorship will come from combining different powers (political and religious) and putting all this in the hands of a few people - religious clerics also acting as rulers.

Even if some clerics acting simultaneously as politicians do not abuse this new accumulation of power, others coming after them certainly will. Once such a system is set up, it will be very difficult to change.