Pakatan Rakyat leaders, including PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu (seated, left), PKR's Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (seated, centre) and DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng (seated, right) maintained a show of solidarity throughout the presidential council meeting and the press conference afterwards. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Mukhriz Hazim, February 8, 2015.After all the fireworks in the media, there was little evidence today of the acrimony between PAS and DAP at the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) presidential council meeting.All the personalities in the recent spats between PAS and DAP were cordial, courteous and polite towards each other as the top leadership of the opposition pact met for its first meeting in four months and ahead of a Federal Court verdict that could send their leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to jail for sodomy.It had been agreed early on that contentious issues like the Islamic penal code and local council elections would not be dealt with today but at separate meetings in the future, a source from one of the PR parties and familiar with the meeting today said.DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng was seated beside PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang. Both had been engaged in a verbal war over the Islamist party leader's absence at past meetings, but today, were cordial towards each other.The Penang chief minister had also been in a media spat with PAS secretary-general Datuk Mustafa Ali over local council election, with the latter even calling the DAP secretary-general a "liar" over the issue, but today only saw polite exchanges.Hadi, too, had been the target of Guan Eng's father, DAP veteran and national adviser Lim Kit Siang, over his attendance at previous leadership council meetings.PAS information chief Datuk Mahfuz Omar said the meeting agreed at the outset that contentious issues would have to be dealt with separately at separate meetings."The consensus reached was to deal with these issues at another meeting. The draft on hudud and local government would be deferred," Mahfuz said.The lack of fireworks was likely due to the fact that all at the meeting today were told beforehand that its purpose was to consolidate the opposition alliance ahead of the Federal Court's verdict on Anwar's sodomy appeal on Tuesday, the source said.“The council members could not discuss anything concrete because of the uncertainty hanging over Anwar's future."The meeting was to show the coalition was intact despite difference of opinion expressed over the last few months," he said.Contentious issues like Kelantan's plan to implement the Islamic penal code were struck off the agenda, following the state's deputy menteri besar Datuk Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah's explanation that the proposed Bill was still under embargo and would only be tabled at the legislative assembly or Parliament.Everyone accepted this and did not challenge it, the source said.“The meeting then went on to deliberate on the future of PR wthout Anwar but it was then decided another meeting would be held after the verdict on Tuesday," he said.PKR vice-president Tian Chua stressed that Guan Eng and Hadi got along well despite the recent exchanges between both."Everything was okay. No controversy. The meeting went smoothly," the Batu MP told The Malaysian Insider.It wasn't exactly a carnival, the source said, but "neither was everyone waiting to attack each other." – February 8, 2015.
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