“Certain people contacted me. They kept wanting to meet me about an offer to join the government,” he said at a press conference at the World Trade Centre here.

However, Hadi claimed the offer would not benefit PAS and that joining the government would only serve to strengthen the latter’s position by adding more seats to it.

The Perikatan Nasional (PN) deputy chairman said any offer to join the government should see PAS being given a dominant role as, of all parties, it had the most number of parliamentary seats.

“PAS has 43 seats (and all its MPs are Malay-Muslims). PKR only has 30, with nine MPs being non-Malays and only 19 being Muslims. On the other hand, of the DAP’s 40 seats, 37 of the MPs are non-Malays,” the Marang MP pointed out.

“They want to invite PAS, but PAS would be taking a backseat,” he said.

PAS, DAP and PKR used to be part of Pakatan Rakyat and contested together in the 2013 general election (GE13) before the coalition broke up in 2015.

Last week, Hadi said PAS was willing to work with others but would not hesitate to pull out if the cooperation went against its principles and strategies.

He maintained that PAS was not a political “halfway house” or a pushover, and would not be used by others for the sake of position, power or riches.