WHILE PAS is Pakatan Harapan’s party spoiler on the west coast, the coalition will destroy the Islamist party’s hopes of recapturing Terengganu, said a political science academic.

Speaking at Universiti Malaya’s (UM) “Heading towards GE14” seminar today, Dr Mazlan Ali said PH cannot capture Terengganu but will play spoiler in three-cornered fights in the state.

“PAS’ situation is made worse after the 2015 and 2017 muktamar (annual congress) where it first split into Amanah (2015) and then left Pakatan Rakyat (2017),” said Mazlan during his presentation “Political trends and GE14 simulation (Terengganu)”.

According to the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) politics and public policy lecturer, PAS members are now split.

“From four studies conducted since 2015, 65% of PAS members are hardcore, 20% are confused and 10% are pro-Amanah though they still remain in PAS,” said Mazlan.

He said if PAS were to work with Umno officially, the membership will be split again as the support for an Umno-PAS pact varies from state to state.

“More than half of PAS Terengganu support such a cooperation. But elsewhere, the support is much lower.”

Iseas Yusof-Ishak Institute senior fellow Wan Saiful Wan Jan said on-the-ground interviews show an Umno-PAS pact will not go down well in Johor.

“Many of the PAS supporters there have suffered discrimination under the Umno government and will not accept any form of cooperation with it,” said Wan Saiful.

Although the emergence of Bersatu and Amanah is not enough to help PH win the state, the two new parties have dented Umno and PAS’ influence in Johor.

“I’m expecting a 20-35% drop for PAS compared with a 3-10% fall in influence for Umno,” said the expert on Kelantan and Terengganu politics.

PAS left with only Sura and Paka 

The party split and the impending three-cornered fights, said Mazlan, pointed to another victory for the Barisan Nasional state government.

“People are also generally satisfied with Umno in Terengganu.

“After all the talk about the suffering fishermen there, they are mostly satisfied as the government gives them incentives for petrol, etc. In fact, FELCRA gives out dividends up to four times a year,” he added.

Mazlan, who ran a simulation of the eight federal and 32 state seats in Terengganu in GE14, said BN will sweep the parliamentary seats and win 30 state seats while PAS will be left with two state seats – Sura and Paka.

Without factoring in the choice of candidates, he said the average support for Umno/BN was around 54.5% compared with PAS’ 45.5%

PAS holds three parliamentary (Kuala Nerus, Marang and Dungun) and 14 state seats. It lost the Kuala Terengganu federal seat to Amanah after the party split in 2015. – January 18, 2018.