Two news items in the harakahdaily.net were interesting if only for the timing of news reports on Saturday.

Speaking in Gombak, PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang reportedly said PAS had been ready for sometime to have a dialogue with Umno/Barisan Nasional on issues pertaining to Islam and other issues of public interest.

Another report, datelined Kota Bharu, had the party’s spiritual adviser Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat expanding on PAS’ dialogue invitation to Umno, as if to plug an oversight in Hadi’s statement.

The Mursyidul Am said the “muzakarah” invitation was only in relation to “religion and religious issues, with special focus on finding a way forward in the Allah row”.

For his part, it may be assumed that Hadi was only keeping to what his deputy Nasharuddin Mat Isa promised in June last year — that the party will keep the door open for talks with Umno.

Although Hadi spoke those words at a presidential briefing on the use of “Allah” by non-Muslims, PAS’ pliant posture towards Umno would cause jitters in Pakatan Rakyat (PR), which is already having to put a brave face against a slew of reports on fraying relations within its ranks.

Nik Aziz’s comment could be seen as an attempt to ease such jitters. But while Nik Aziz has done his part, it would not be missed by the leaders of the other PR components that a divergence of opinions is still festering within the PAS leadership in respect of the party’s commitment to their partnership.

This flirtation with Umno while at the same time professing commitment to PR may have its uses for PAS in its dealing with PR partners, but in the long run, the dithering will only hurt the party in the eyes of its symphatisers.

For its own sake, PAS must erase this perception of a changeable force to forestall a loss of its credibility as a political party.

In any case, this fixation with “dialogues” is something that’s very difficult to fathom in a system that subscribes to the norms of a parliamentary democracy. If such dialogues are mere chats and exchanges of opinions that are not expected to lead to a binding arrangement, they should be kept out of public realm, unless there are other motives for doing so.

Let’s not trivialise the country’s democratic institutions. If an issue is important enough for the public, sort it out in parliament. Otherwise, PAS, or any other party, would have to be fair to its coalition partners. It’s just as obliged to keep its partners informed of its plans as it does the party’s own constituency.

True, PR is still a loose coalition. But diverse tones in Hadi and Nik Aziz’s statements would not do anything to advance the partnership. On the contrary, they would lend more credence to belief that PR is a defective three-legged stool.

Under ordinary circumstances, a three-legged stool has the positive attribute of holding aloft what could not be achieved by two legs. The assumptions here are that the legs are of even length and the surface on which the stool stands is flat.

Events of recent days suggest that such assumptions do not apply to PR, hence all the wriggling and tugging in the coalition, particularly in Penang. Then, there’s the issue of Zulkifli Noordin (PKR) and Khalid Samad (PAS), and the spat between Jeff Ooi (DAP) and Wee Choo Keong (PKR).

To add to the strain, PKR’s legal status has now come under the spotlight after the court ruled that Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) has not been dissolved, casting doubts about the validity of the Parti Keadilan Nasional-PRM union in 2003.

In this light, it is easy to read differently of PAS’s suggestion of a dialogue with Umno.

Next month, PR will celebrate the second anniversary of their feat in thumping BN’s nose at the ballot box. Yet in the two years past, it has not been able to find enough peace within itself to take a decisive, meaningful step forward.

Despite its leaders straining their vocal cords crooning “Fanfare for the Common Man”, their pitch has remained discordant. PR leaders must have known from the beginning that the stool that supports their aspiration of a unified opposition has legs of varying length, for each party is distinct in its composition and tensile qualities.

Their mistake is in the assumption that there is an even surface for the stool to stand. It’s an ideal situation but one that infers two legs have to be sawn-off or lashed with odd butts to the length of the other, presumably to the length of the most beautiful leg — a contentious issue in itself.

No doubt, some PR leaders must have dreamed of converting the stool into a chair or a sofa. But what do they do when some of them are just happy to accept a mat instead.