PR Pro Youth NGO wants PAS to stop causing trouble in Pakatan

Fed up with PAS’s insistence on prolonging the Selangor Menteri Besar (MB) issue, a group of youths led by recently-convicted social activist Safwan Anang will hand over a letter to Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang tomorrow demanding that the party toe the line in Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

Safwan, who was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment for sedition on September 5, said his group, Lensa Anak Muda Malaysia (Lensa) had concluded that PAS had caused the Selangor MB crisis that saw PR on the brink of splitting up.

“Over the past few months, Lensa asked politicians, academics, what went wrong with PR and they all pointed to PAS and its flip-flop stance on the MB issue,” said Safwan, who founded Lensa in June and is the group’s executive director.

“The crisis should have ended by now, as the new MB has been sworn in already, but suddenly Selangor PAS is complaining that it never asked for its number of executive councillors to be reduced from four to three. This must stop.”

Safwan said he and about five other Lensa members would turn up at PAS’s headquarters in Jalan Raja Laut at 10am tomorrow to submit the letter to the party president titled “PAS must stop triggering tension”.

When asked why he was fighting this battle, Safwan said Lensa represented the voice of young voters in Malaysia who were banking on PR to take over Putrajaya and steer the country to a better direction.

“We are considered pro-PR because we know BN has no future, so why hope on BN any further? We want PR to provide new politics for Malaysians, otherwise there is no hope left at all for us,” said Safwan.

But he said youths were growing sick of PR, as reflected in its recent loss in Pengkalan Kubor, and that Lensa believed the sickness began with PAS.

Safwan said he had formed Lensa in June after leaving Solidariti Mahasiswa Malaysia (SMM), a group comprising students across Malaysia.

“Our objective is to evaluate the performance of both the government and the opposition after the general election and to create a new generation that is aware of democracy in Malaysia, and how they can play a part in it,” he said.

Safwan added that the recent sedition conviction against him had not deterred him from continuing his social activism, particularly his fight against the Sedition Act 1948.

“If I don’t fight, then it ends there. So I’ve made the decision to take up the fight and educate the youths on their rights,” he said.

The Sessions Court sentenced Safwan to 10 months’ jail on September 5 after it found him guilty of sedition.

Safwan was said to have uttered seditious statements to incite the public to remove the government by extra-legal means during a speech last year at a May 13 forum. – September 29, 2014.