At the party’s general assembly in Alor Setar last September, delegates voted unanimously on two motions. PAS should lead Perikatan Nasional into the next election. The coalition’s candidate for prime minister should come from PAS.
Abdul Hadi Awang, the party president, closed the assembly by telling them to wait. “Islam must be victorious, but you are too hasty,” he said. “Work first, struggle first.”
Eleven months on, PAS is still the largest party in the Dewan Rakyat and has not named anyone. The Dewan Rakyat is the elected house of Parliament. It has 222 members. Three jobs matter here. Chairman of the coalition is an internal party post. Leader of the opposition is a job in Parliament. Prime minister needs 112 of those members.
Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Harapan govern together. Perikatan Nasional is the opposition, and PAS is its biggest party.
PAS won 43 seats in 2022, three more than DAP, leaving it 69 short of a majority. It runs Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah, and its vice-president, Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar, has chaired Perikatan Nasional since February.
How the chairmanship came free
Not by agreement. Each state has its own assembly, separate from Parliament. In December, eight assemblymen in Perlis withdrew support from Mohd Shukri Ramli of PAS, who headed the state government as menteri besar. Five were from Bersatu, three from PAS. Hadi expelled the three. Shukri resigned on Dec 25, citing his health, and a Bersatu assemblyman was sworn in three days later.
PAS had held nine of the state’s 15 seats. After its own expulsions it held six and said six beat five, so it should pick the next menteri besar. PAS did not get the job. Hadi called the removal a betrayal.
The crisis cost Bersatu more. Muhyiddin Yassin resigned as coalition chairman on Jan 1. Samsuri took the post seven weeks later.
Twenty days as opposition leader
Bersatu sacked Hamzah Zainudin as its deputy president in February. He sat as an independent, and the opposition leadership stayed vacant until Perikatan gave it to Samsuri in May.
His term ran from May 21 to June 10. He never sat in the House in the role. On June 13, at a convention in Tanah Merah with Samsuri beside him, Hadi announced that Hamzah would return. Hamzah had launched a party that morning, Parti Wawasan Negara. In February, 18 members of Parliament had lined up behind him, some expelled by Bersatu, some still sitting with it. Six signed up.
PAS gave back the parliamentary post and kept the coalition one.
What PAS got for not standing
In Johor on July 11, Perikatan left 23 of 56 seats uncontested and told voters to back Barisan Nasional. Barisan won 48, up from 40 in 2022. Pakatan Harapan took eight. Perikatan won none. Analysts at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School say Barisan’s smaller partners won only because Perikatan stayed out.
In Negeri Sembilan on Aug 1, the two coalitions divided the map before nomination day, Barisan taking 25 seats and Perikatan 11. Barisan won 18 and leads the state. Perikatan won seven, three of them by Wawasan, which campaigned with Barisan and PAS machinery. PAS held Serting by 843 votes in 2023 and won this time by 12,115.
PAS added about 6,300 votes, going from 10,312 to 16,608. The government side lost about 5,000 because its candidate changed party and the vote fell from Umno’s 9,469 to Amanah’s 4,493. Barisan did not stand. Bersatu did, and took 736 votes, under an eighth of the total, so it forfeited the deposit every candidate pays to stand.
The case the other way
Umno’s long run ended in 2018. It won 54 seats that year, more than any other party, and went into opposition. Since then the job has gone to whoever could hold a coalition together, not whoever won most. DAP won 40 seats in 2022 against PKR’s 31 and backed Anwar Ibrahim without asking for anything.
PAS has taken things too. It cut ties with Bersatu on June 9. Bersatu then contested Negeri Sembilan alone and lost all 24 seats.
None of this shows that PAS wants the premiership. It shows that the party with the most seats has traded one position after another for eight months and still has not named anyone.
