AMANAH, the ruling coalition’s progressive Islamist party, received a big boost membership when its rival PAS announced its marriage to Barisan Nasional lynchpin Umno this year, said Amanah president Mohamad Sabu.

Mohamad told The Malaysian Insight this was because some PAS members and supporters could not agree with the PAS-Umno pact, muafakat nasional, and shifted their support to Amanah.

This migration from PAS to Amanah occurred even after the former played up fears among its members that Amanah’s partner in Pakatan Harapan, DAP, is anti-Islam.

Some of the biggest increases in members occurred in Kelantan, a state PAS has governed for almost three decades, Mohamad told The Malaysian Insight.

“The interest in joining Amanah in Kelantan is so extraordinary. One division has between 2,000 and 3,000 new members,” said Mohamad ahead of the Amanah annual congress this weekend.

“Some PAS members can’t accept Umno because of the historical animosity between the two parties to the point that they had both called each other terrible names. So, they joined Amanah.”

PAS and Umno’s fractious history has seen supporters of both camps calling each other infidels and extremists, and in states such as Terengganu, mosques and surau have been divided along partisan lines.

The then BN government led by Umno was accused of depriving Kelantan of much-needed development funds in retaliation for PAS taking over the state after the 1990 general election.

Yet PAS has been able to hang on to Kelantan throughout seven elections partly because of its charismatic former spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat.

After it lost control of the federal government, Umno decided to put its bitter history behind and enter into a pact with PAS.

The two opposition parties signed a pact called muafakat nasional in September, which is a political movement to defeat PH in the next elections.

Focus on building party

Amanah was first formed in 2015 by former PAS leaders and parliamentarians who disagreed with the party’s increasingly conservative tilt and its decision to end ties with DAP.

Between its founding and GE14 in May 2018, the majority of Amanah members were from PAS.

The party is scheduled to hold its first party elections this weekend in Shah Alam where members will choose a new 27-member central committee.

The central committee will then choose among themselves who will fill the roles of president, deputy president and two vice-chiefs.

Mohamad told The Malaysian Insight that despite the increase in new members, the party still needs to form more new branches to organise members and party programmes.

“We are registering 3,000 individual members in one division, for instance, but we have been slow in establishing branches because many of our members lack the organisational know-how. So for the next three years, this is what we will focus on.”

Mohamad doesn’t expect the party’s elections to be as tumultuous as those seen in other parties because of the fact that individuals do not contest for specific posts but for a seat on the national committee.

This cuts down on the internal jostling that is common in elections in other parties, he said.

“People mostly do not see Amanah as a party with a lot of infighting. Generally, people see Amanah as a party that is unified.” – December 5, 2019.