THERE are delusional people. There are empty vessels. There are dreamers.

And then there is PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang who occupies his own universe. 

He recently suggested that his party, which has been a bit player before it hung onto the coattails of the Reformasi movement, could win 40 parliamentary seats and emerge as the kingmaker after GE14.

Without the support of non-Malays, PAS candidates will only be able to rely on the votes of its base in the coming elections. The result will be predictable: PAS candidates will be annihilated in most of the contests for seats.

It currently has 14 parliamentary seats. Pollsters believe that Hadi’s PAS will pay the price of leaving the opposition fold and getting cosy with Najib Razak –  by ending up with fewer than 10 MPs in Parliament.

But Hadi needs to stick to his narrative because he has managed to convince some of his party men that somehow, the Islamist party has become a major force in Malaysian politics.

He needs to persuade them that his strategy of getting friendly with Umno and becoming “independent” of Pakatan Harapan will bear unprecedented dividends.

We believe that his target of 40 seats is so unattainable that we have come up with a list of events that are more likely to occur before Hadi’s pie in the sky is realised.

Here’s the list:

1. The Malaysian football team will qualify for the World Cup and lift the trophy in Qatar in 2022.

2. Low Taek Jho, the PM’s buddy and businessman linked to the 1Malaysia Development Bhd scandal, will be knighted by the Queen of England; he will also be appointed adviser to the International Monetary Fund.

3. Malaysia’s youth will give up Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other social platforms.

4. Mr Red Shirt Jamal Yunus will retire to a life of solitude.

5. Utusan Malaysia will select Ambiga Sreenivasan as Malaysian of the Year.

6. DAP will join Barisan Nasional and Lim Guan Eng will be the Finance Minister in Najib’s cabinet.

7. Dr Mahathir Mohamad will cease to be the polarising figure he is in Malaysia.

8. Some Umno politicians will finally understand that the DOJ is not a Malaysian agency but the Justice Department of the United States and that the 1MDB probe is not some “masak-masak”. 

9. Isa Samad will be cleared of all wrongdoing in Felda and will live happily ever after.

10. Najib will retire from politics.

This is a list so ludicrous it should be dismissed outright. The fact that Hadi’s 40-seat prediction is even more unlikely than any of the events on the list indicates the ridiculous scale of his thinking. 

The reality for PAS is this: it will most likely lose Kelantan and a whole bunch of its current MPs will have to join the unemployment queue after GE14. 

The party faithful have a suspicion that the president’s so-called third force strategy is going to lead them to oblivion but they are unwilling or incapable of stopping him.

What they need is that dose of reality. Perhaps they will get it in GE14. – January 15, 2018.