{"id":11575,"date":"2015-01-08T16:25:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T08:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=11575"},"modified":"2015-01-08T17:38:36","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T09:38:36","slug":"more-than-meets-the-eye-to-harakahs-editorial-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/more-than-meets-the-eye-to-harakahs-editorial-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"More than meets the eye to Harakah’s editorial woes"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Pauline Wong<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Is<\/a>

Is it really PAS for all? Is its factionalism spilling over?<\/p><\/div>\n

If a game of musical chairs happened among the chief executives of any company (or any government-owned \u2018private\u2019 investment fund for that matter), it is usually enough to send everyone into a tailspin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Investors flee, shares drop, and overall, the company suffers a reputation hit from which it may never recover.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So when PAS party organ Harakah saw two editors (in different positions) removed – and one more asked to leave- in a short span of just a few months, one should already hear the warning bells in the air.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is because \u2014 to borrow irreverently from a certain BN component party\u2019s misguided GE13 slogan\u2014 \u201cwhat happens to Harakah, happens to PAS\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is an open secret that PAS finds itself in its weakest position yet after the 13th General Elections in May 2013, where it won only 21 out of 73 seats contested.<\/span><\/p>\n

That, and the two factions within PAS \u2014 the ulama<\/i> (conservatives) and the professionals (progressives) \u2014 appear to be at loggerheads all the time, be it on the issues of hudud<\/i> punishment or banning alcohol and Valentine\u2019s Day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So when the ulama<\/i> faction allegedly pressured Harakah\u2019s editor Ahmad Lutfi Othman to resign due to \u2018health reasons\u2019, it should not be taken lightly \u2014 if indeed the allegations are true.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lutfi is not the first of Harakah\u2019s key editorial staff that has been\u00a0asked to leave, however. Two others, Tarmizi Md Jam and Roslan Hamid were also axed late last year, allegedly for being responsible for running articles which were less than complimentary of the ulama<\/i> faction.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of these articles was written by author Che Samsudin Othman, popularly known as Dinsman,\u00a0titled<\/a>: \u2018Kepimpinan ulama dan salah faham mengenainya<\/i>\u2019 (The ulama<\/i> leadership and its misconceptions).<\/span><\/p>\n

Incidentally, Dinsmans\u2019 column on Harakah was also terminated recently.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a commentary<\/a> on The Malaysian Insider, Dinsman wrote that PAS now fashions itself as beyond reproach.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe leadership in PAS have become unable to withstand criticism. They immediately react and use any power it has to curb this criticism. I used to think only the late Kedah Mentri Besar Azizan Razak was like that, but it turns out that many of the ulama<\/i> in PAS are like that now,\u201d he wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

He went on to say that he had merely criticised those among the ulama who \u201cdo not behave like ulama\u201d and end up tarnishing the image of a religious leader.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shah Alam MP and PAS central committee member Khalid Samad once wrote that there is even a faction within the ulama<\/i> faction who want to break away from Pakatan.<\/span><\/p>\n

His blog posting in September warned of this \u2018chauvinistic\u2019 group of ulama who have divided PAS like never before, who will employ a strategy of promoting ulama leadership until they cannot be challenged and to attack the pro-Pakatan and professional factions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is the muzzling of PAS\u2019s party organ a sign of the strengthening of this faction and its ideals?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"More<\/a>

More than meets the eye to Harakah’s editorial woes (Pic from Rakyatnews.my)<\/p><\/div>\n

The answer to this is not so easily found. Parit Buntar MP Mujahid Yusof Rawa, when contacted, refrained from commenting on this issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a management issue and we are waiting for the facts, otherwise I would be delving into the realm of the speculative,\u201d he briefly told The Rocket.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, is this issue really so simple as a battle between two factions to gain control?<\/span><\/p>\n

Political analyst Dr Wong Chin Huat in a column<\/a> in The Nut Graph more than five years ago did not think so. At that time, he said that PAS is not so much divided into \u2018ulama\u2019 versus \u2018professionals\u2019, but into those who prescribe to the red-ocean and blue-ocean strategies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe current\u00a0 formation of PAS\u2019s factions is informed by the use of business buzzwords, the \u201cblue ocean\u201d and \u201cred ocean\u201d strategies. A \u201cred ocean\u201d refers to the crowded, known market where cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody, or red. In contrast, a blue ocean is the unknown marketplace, in which rules of the game are waiting to be set, and which provides ample opportunities for growth,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In his analysis he says that the \u2018colours\u2019 within the PAS factions vary from \u2018red\u2019 to \u2018true blue\u2019, and PAS leaders fall within these various spectrums depending on what the \u2018game\u2019 is in the constituency \u2014 is it the Malay-Muslim game or the multi-ethnic game?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither side can embrace one ideal too completely, lest they lose the support of those of other ideals, and neither side can reach the end-game of Putrajaya without the other; making the factions far more nuanced than meets the eye.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fast forward five years to today and the perennial question of \u201cWho is PAS?\u201d crops up again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This time, PAS and Pakatan Rakyat must dig deep and find answers, or the dismissal of one editor could mean the \u2018dismissal\u2019 of the party by a significant bloc of voters. -The Rocket<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Pauline Wong If a game of musical chairs happened among the chief executives of any company (or any government-owned \u2018private\u2019 investment fund for that matter), it is usually enough to send everyone into a tailspin. Investors flee, shares drop, and overall, the company suffers a reputation hit from which it may never recover.\u00a0 So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11605,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11575\/revisions\/11605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}