Amanah is a splinter party of PAS while DAP had criticised the Islamist party’s insistence on implementing hudud law in Kelantan and the country. This led to the breakup of the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition.

PAS vice-president Iskandar Abdul Samad told Sinar Harian their absence was not meant to insult PPBM’s chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

He regretted Mahathir’s comments that PAS was only pretending to fight against BN and was interested in splitting the votes to enable the coalition to win.

He also said it had nothing to do with allegations that PAS was cosying up to BN or Umno president Najib Razak.

Iskandar claimed PAS was still against the ruling coalition at all levels and had not forgotten “atrocities” committed against the party by BN in the past.

Iskandar told the Malay daily PAS decided not to attend the function as it did not have any political ties with Amanah or DAP.

He said their absence was “a small matter” and also said PAS leaders had other matters to attend to that particular evening.

He said meetings were still held between PAS and PPBM, with one function attended by PPBM president Muhyiddin Yassin and another to be attended by PPBM vice-president Mukhriz Mahathir in future.

Mukhriz, in his prepared speech during the launching ceremony at Malawati Stadium, had read out Iskandar’s name by mistake when acknowledging those present at the launching.

This created the impression to observers that Iskandar had been invited to the function but had declined to attend.

Malaysiakini reported that Pokok Sena MP Mahfuz Omar had criticised the move not to send any representative to the launch as this had created the impression that PAS did not want to establish ties with the opposition alliance.

The portal said the former vice-president was the sole PAS leader to attend the event.