Pakatan Harapan warns of stern action including sacking member parties not aligned to its cause

Pakatan Harapan (PH), a coalition formed by opposition political parties DAP, PKR and Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah), today outlined decisive action including sacking of any member party not aligned to its cause.

In addition, three bodies were created to streamline the administration of the alliance, one of them being the Presidential Council, which is the highest decision-making body responsible for removing any member party from the pact.

The other two bodies are a Mediation Council, in charge of handling complaints and resolving disputes in the coalition, and the Election Committee tasked with negotiating the distribution of seats between the three parties for each election.

Amanah organising secretary Suhaizan Kayat when presenting the clauses of the agreement during the PH leadership conference here today, said the action of creating an authority to remove any party not aligned with the cause of the coalition was important to avoid political disputes in the pact.

He said this could also prevent the credibility of the coalition parties being affected, as happened in the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition before this.

"We have learnt from the mistakes of PR, because before this there was no one authority that could 'terminate' the membership of a party in the alliance," he said.

Suhaizan said: "We do not want any party in this alliance to do two things, as happened in PR, that is working to strengthen the alliance, and at the same time undermining it."

PR, a coalition of opposition parties comprising PAS, DAP and PKR established in 2008 after the 12th General Election, was shrouded in internal conflicts on the issue of hudud and a scramble for seats to be contested in the general election.

The pact was dissolved after PAS and DAP severed ties in June last year.

Meanwhile, PKR vice president Rafizi Ramli, who also explained the clauses of the agreement at the ceremony, said that with the new agreement between PH members, there would no longer be a concept of 'agree to disagree' practised in the coalition.

Rafizi said that with the agreement, issues which arose in the previous pact that cast a negative view of the parties concerned in the eye of the public, would not occur again.

Suhaizan, Rafizi and DAP organising secretary Anthony Loke Siew Fook were among the politicians involved in the drafting of the new PH agreement, which contained seven clauses.

Also present at the ceremony were Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, Amanah chairman Mohamad Sabu and other senior leaders from the three parties.