Mighty strange bedfellows

New mates: Perikatan welcomed into its house Wawasan and Pejuang led by Hamzah (left) and Mukhriz respectively – with the former less welcomed than the latter by Muhyiddin’s party, as the hostile relationship between PAS and Bersatu continue playing out. — Bernama/The Star

LAST week, PAS and Bersatu entered a bizarre state of “Bercerai namun masih duduk serumah” – officially divorced on June 8, yet stubbornly refusing to pack their bags and vacate the shared Perikatan Nasional house.

A few days later, this bitter domestic drama evolved from a standoff on the porch into a surreal, polygamous farce.

Perikatan, now controlled by PAS via its vice-president, Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar, who serves as the coalition chairman, officially opened the front door and married two wives on Monday.

The opposition coalition accepted Parti Cinta Malaysia (which is Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin’s brand-new political vehicle, slated for a rebranding as Parti Wawasan Negara) and Pejuang, which Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir heads.

While Bersatu accepted Pejuang’s entry into the household, its reaction to Wawasan was a completely different story.

Predictably, the party headed by Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin threw a massive tantrum at the reception – Hamzah, after all, is the man Muhyiddin kicked out of Bersatu – claiming the new arrange­­ment violated the household’s strict consensus rules. But the minor wives, Gerakan and MIPP, fell in line behind PAS. Bersatu protests were treated as nothing more than background noise.

However, even though PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang had declared that his party was terminating its political cooperation with Bersatu, Perikatan could not – or did not – kick out Muhyiddin’s party.

In the cutthroat logic of political survival, it turns out that while you can divorce your spouse and bring a new flame into the house, you can’t easily kick out the ex. Because Bersatu remains a legally registered component of Perikatan under the Registrar of Societies (ROS) framework, PAS cannot unilaterally throw it out into the street before the Johor polls’ nomination day (which was yesterday; polling day is July 11).

Doing so would risk bureaucratic chaos, court injunctions, or worse: the ROS suspending the entire Perikatan vehicle.

The result? PAS has reluctantly agreed to let Bersatu candidates contest under the Perikatan flag in Johor. The compromise has produced a strangely uneven family outing for the upcoming polls, with Perikatan fielding candidates in 33 out of Johor’s 56 state seats.

Bersatu is taking the lion’s share, 16 seats, followed by PAS with 11, debutant MIPP is going for five, and new bride Pejuang is picking up a single seat. Both Wawasan and Gerakan, the other Perikatan component party, are staying out of the Johor polls altogether.

It is a deeply awkward arrangement. The split is official, new bride Wawasan has already moved into the bedroom, yet PAS is letting the ex-wife sleep in the house for the duration of the Johor campaign because neither side can afford to forfeit custody of the valuable coalition banner.

Days before nomination day, I’m told by Perikatan sources that there were frantic, behind the scenes attempts by Wawasan and Hamzah to serve as a bridge to a jajaran baru (new alignment) between Perikatan and Barisan Nasional. But the dispute over seat allocations ultimately collapsed the negotiations; Barisan stood firm in its decision to go solo and contest all 56 seats.

On the surface, it looks like PAS is directly confronting Umno/Barisan in 11 seats. But Abdul Hadi threw a highly ambiguous curve ball on Friday, “clarifying” that while his party will not campaign for Bersatu, it still wants a Malay-Muslim government in Johor to block “liberals and non-Muslims” (some see this as a Hadi-coded phrase for Pakatan Harapan). This leaves a massive back door wide open – a wink-and-nod arrangement for PAS voters to back Umno where PAS is not running.

There are 14 seats featuring a straight fight between Barisan (comprising Umno, MCA, MIC, and PBRS) and Pakatan (consisting of PKR, DAP, and Amanah). Without a Perikatan candidate in the fray to split the Malay vote, many political analysts see this structural vacuum as an immense advantage for Barisan.

The theory is that, in the 2022 Johor polls, Pakatan managed to slip through and claim victory in several marginal seats with razor-thin majorities simply because the anti-Pakatan vote was split right down the middle between Barisan and Perikatan. With Perikatan choosing to stay completely out of these 14 specific equations for the 2026 campaign, the deadly spoiler effect vanishes, handing Barisan a clear, unified runway to reclaim them.

I’m told by Perikatan insiders that in the seats where PAS is not contesting, Wawasan and PAS will quietly and indirectly instruct their machinery to support Barisan, especially in Umno seats.

The real litmus test for whether this jajaran baru is a functional reality or a pipe dream will be the Negri Sembilan polls, with nomination day set for July 18 and polling day on Aug 1.

Conventional wisdom dictates that the traditional Malay parties, specifically PAS and Umno, must forge a concrete electoral pact there if they hope to dismantle Pakatan, which is dominant in the state.

Yet, some political analysts will counter that Negri Sembilan – with its unique sociopolitical fabric and adat perpatih traditions – is just as politically distinct as Johor. In the state’s complex landscape, a marriage of convenience between the major Malay parties offers no ironclad guarantee of electoral victory.

With the shaky state of the Perikatan marriage, even though Bersatu is contesting under the Perikatan logo in Johor, there is no guarantee it will do so in Negri Sembilan. Those who want a jajaran baru minus Bersatu to happen might make their move in the Negri Sembilan polls.

If the Johor polls are just a temporary, awkward case of sleeping with the ex, Negri Sembilan might be where PAS and Wawasan finally pack Bersatu’s bags, throw them out of the Perikatan house, and file for a permanent, irreversible decree absolute.