KLANG, Dec 23 — Parti Amanah Negara must find its voice to counter the rhetoric from the rival PAS party and to demand sterner action against the latter for its racial and religious incitement, delegates said at the party’s annual convention today.

Amanah’s three-day convention is to pick a new leadership for 2024 and beyond. During the debate of the president’s speech, several fiery speakers expressed their concerns about and hopes for the leadership that will steer the party.

Deputy chairman of Sarawak Amanah Andri Zulkarnaen Hamden said he was perplexed at how politicians like PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang could still roam free despite repeatedly using race and religion to stir tensions in the country.

"Political stability is what everyone wants except those from PAS like Hadi. We need to let the public know that they need to be extra wary and careful when listening to people like him who keep recycling old issues.

"(Hadi claims that) Malays are oppressed, rights stripped, and so on; all of it makes no sense but he keeps saying it and till today the government hasn’t punished him. When we don’t take action against people like this the kampung and rural folk who are listening to his rhetoric are believing it.

"We urgently need to change this negative perception that’s played up by the opposition. Undi 18 that was supposed to benefit us seems to have backfired because nothing was done to stop the lies. So, I hope the leadership can look to find solutions and ministers should punish him for spreading lies. lest we forget if we keep letting this continue it’s not guaranteed we will win at the next general elections, GE16,” he said during his speech.

Melaka branch deputy chairman Datuk Mohd Sofi Wahab said the party leadership also needs clear metrics to make it easy to monitor progress or lack of it. He said Amanah must have proper plans, the right people to implement these and to make sure to see them all the way through.

"We heard earlier the Pahang representative mention when there’s an election so many non-members pop up at our headquarters and nothing is done to stop these illegal members coming and voting. We desperately need to improve our systems and processes,” he said.

Padang Besar Amanah branch chairman retired Capt Mohamad Saad@Yahaya spoke of the need to improve relations between members in the divisions with the top brass at federal levels.

Mohamad said a divide exists between the grassroots and leaders which if not fixed will alienate the loyal members as they may feel neglected or unappreciated.

"There’s a gap there between top and bottom. Some Amanah leaders, when they came to Perlis, didn’t even know there’s a Padang Besar branch,” he said to laughter from the hall.

"This is due to poor communication. This kind of optics is not good when the public looks at us, we look disorganised. To improve these types of perception from the public we need more meet-ups and that personal touch, which is severely lacking now,” he said.

Several other speakers also brought up the issue of Amanah losing out to PAS in the social media stakes.

They agreed with Mohamad that Amanah was losing in the race and religion social media war as PAS was using the Islam to deceive and mislead.

"We’re still losing the social media fight and we seem to be struggling to fight the accusations hurled at us that we are non-Islam and non-Malay. In my opinion this is why we lost many seats at the last general election, especially in the East coast,” he added.

Terengganu branch committee member Datuk Seri Suhaimi Hashim echoed Mohamad’s sentiments. He said Amanah lost all seats in Terengganu and if nothing is done to fight the PAS machinery they may as well pack their bags.

"We mentioned how Hadi had been spreading lies and his teachings are lost, we mentioned how PAS Terengganu used all methods to win over the people and that’s why we have zero seats there. There is plenty of work to be done beginning with me asking for the president to come to Terengganu more often to meet us.

"These are the ways we can try to win over more people to our side,” said Suhaimi.

This is the eight edition of Amanah’s annual convention.