PAS has backstabbed Umno by joining Perikatan Nasional despite being in Muafakat Nasional with Umno, said Salahuddin Ayub.

“PAS doesn’t want Umno to be strong again and has decided to hedge its bets with Bersatu by joining Perikatan,” the Amanah deputy president told The Malaysian Insight in Slim today.

Umno will be the strongest Malay party if all three – Umno, PAS and Bersatu – remain in MN alone, he said.

“They are worried that Umno will turn on them if it becomes too strong,” said the Pulai MP.

Umno currently has 39 MPs while Bersatu and PAS have 31 and 18 respectively. Out of Bersatu’s 31, 15 are from Umno while another 10 are from PKR.

“If Umno takes back its 15 MPs by contesting in those seats, it could end up with as many as 55 MPs while Bersatu and PAS will be the smaller parties,” said Salahuddin.

PAS is worried as Umno “betrayed” the party in the 1970s, he said.

Last week, PAS joined Bersatu, MIC and STAR to register PN as a separate political coalition although Umno said that it would not join the pact.

In 1972, PAS joined Barisan Nasional after the 1969 racial riots to strengthen Malay unity. Its president, Asri Muda, became a minister in the Abdul Razak Hussein cabinet and even contested under the BN logo in the 1974 elections, winning 14 seats to Umno’s 62.

After a conflict between Asri and Umno-favoured menteri besar Mohamad Nasir in Kelantan over investigations into Asri’s financial dealings, PAS moved a no-confidence vote against Nasir.

The BN assemblymen staged a walkout, abandoning Asri to cause a political crisis in the state. Prime minister Hussein Onn then declared an emergency in the state to take control of Kelantan prompting PAS to withdraw from BN in 1977.

Salahuddin described his former party’s actions akin to “a wife having two husbands”.

“But you have to ask Umno why its lover, PAS, is romancing another person. Previously, we didn’t do this kind of thing,” said the former agriculture minister. – August 27, 2020.