Commentary: A mistake got ex-Malaysia PM Muhyiddin a sedition charge. Will it cost him a coalition?

WILL PAS GO SOLO?

The latest addition of the sedition charge against the Bersatu president should be sufficient to make PAS think twice about the coalition’s continuity.

For PAS, leaving a coalition to go solo is something it is accustomed to doing, as soon as it acknowledges that the coalition partners no longer benefit them, just like how they broke ranks with Pakatan Harapan in 2015 and with UMNO under Muafakat Nasional in 2022.

The only thing holding PAS back is whether it could make up for the leadership gap with its professionals, like Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar and Syahir Sulaiman, that could prevent it from retracting back to a regional party.

The recent Nenggiri by-election signalled how PAS sees this coalition relationship playing out, even if it lost.

Even though Nenggiri was an incumbent Bersatu seat, PAS parachuted its candidate and sidelined Bersatu’s proposed names. It even dropped the PN logo in favour of its trademark green-and-white.

The end result of a PN breakup or dissolution would be a weakened opposition, making an electoral turnover in the next general election harder than it already is.

James Chai is a political analyst, columnist and the author of Sang Kancil (Penguin Random House).