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SHAH ALAM – A genuine political alliance between Umno and Pas ahead of the 16th General Election (GE16) would face three major hurdles – their historical baggage, potentially divisive leadership disputes and resistance from grassroots leaders forced to make way for candidates from the rival party, political analyst Dr Oh Ei Sun says.
He said the two parties had worked together before, but previous attempts at cooperation eventually broke down over disagreements and competing interests.
“They have worked together before, but each time they did, things eventually broke down. They quarrelled, had disagreements and eventually split,” he told Sinar Daily.
Oh said leadership could pose another major challenge, particularly as both parties had reasons to believe they should lead any potential alliance.
He said Pas, with its parliamentary strength, would naturally want to lead, while Umno could point to its organisational resources and manpower as reasons for demanding a leading role.
“So, who leads? If the leadership issue is not clarified, it will be very difficult to make the alliance work,” he added.
Political analyst and O2 Research head Anis Anwar Suhaimi agreed that any sustainable understanding between the two parties would require extensive negotiations, particularly over seat allocation, leadership hierarchy and the eventual structure of power-sharing.
He said cooperation between Umno and Pas could not be established overnight, as both parties would first need to negotiate and mutually accept a wide range of issues before any formal arrangement could be institutionalised.
Oh said even if the party leadership managed to reach an agreement, grassroots resistance could still emerge, particularly among division leaders who had spent years preparing to contest seats for their respective parties.
He said an electoral pact could force some of these leaders to step aside if their constituencies were allocated to the other party.
“For example, if I am an Umno division leader who has worked for many years serving my constituency in the hope of becoming the Umno candidate, what happens if that seat is given to Pas under the electoral pact?
“It would be difficult for many grassroots leaders to simply accept that. Some may even decide to leave the party and join other political groups,” Oh said.
He pointed out that the same problem could occur within Pas, as both parties were competing for many of the same Malay-majority seats.
Anis said the situation could also vary considerably from state to state because the relative strength of Umno and Pas was not uniform across the country.
He highlighted that areas where Pas was dominant could see Umno supporters feeling that cooperation would place them in a subordinate position, while Pas supporters could have similar concerns in traditional Umno strongholds.
“Therefore, grassroots acceptance will depend heavily on local political balance and how seat negotiations are managed,” he said when contacted today.
Anis said the parties would also need to move beyond a narrow focus on the number of parliamentary and state seats when discussing cooperation.
He said reducing negotiations to “who gets which constituency” could turn the proposed alliance into another zero-sum competition, when both parties could instead explore wider areas of political and economic power-sharing.
These could include local government representation, government-linked agencies, statutory bodies, policy portfolios and economic development institutions, he said.
Oh, however, maintained that the overlapping electoral interests of the two parties meant compromise would be unavoidable if they wanted to establish a genuine electoral alliance.
“If they want to form an electoral alliance, they would have to compromise on leadership, seat allocation, grassroots concerns and the historical baggage between the two parties.
“So, I would not say it is impossible, but it would be rather difficult,” he said.
Anis said the political environment had nevertheless changed since GE14, with the fragmentation of Malay political power altering the concerns of some grassroots supporters.
He added that the focus among some Malay voters had shifted from simply defeating a rival Malay party to concerns over the broader position of Malay-Muslim political influence.
However, he stressed that decades of rivalry, historical distrust and organisational memories would not disappear immediately.
The key test, Anis said, would be whether Umno and Pas could convince their supporters that cooperation was not about surrendering party identity, but coordinating political strength where their interests overlapped.