MCA and the hudud spook

As usual, the party has seized an opportunity to play the blame game and bark at the wrong party.

COMMENT

Perhaps because their party has virtually made a tradition of leadership conflicts, MCA leaders are most enthusiastic when there is a blame game to play.

Hence, when news came out that PAS would initiate a private member’s parliamentary bill to pave the way for hudud implementation in Kelantan, they welcomed it as a godsend. Here was an opportunity to gain political mileage against DAP.

On April 20, MCA’s publicity department issued a statement denouncing DAP for failure to stop its coalition partner from pursuing an agenda that is abhorrent to non-Muslims.

The statement came with a wordy headline in bold lettering: “MCA to DAP: Don’t shrink from responsibility after placing the cart before the horse. Take action to prevent PAS hudud law from being tabled.”

It said: “All DAP leaders should exert whatever influence they have and bring to a grinding halt PAS’ plans to table a private member’s bill in Parliament to introduce the implementation of PAS hudud in Kelantan.

“DAP should not pass the buck and shift the responsibility to BN members who do not support the PAS hudud law proposal.”

The rest of the four-page statement has been just as childish in content and as amateurish in presentation.

Its main argument was based on the silly assumption that DAP, having the most number of MPs among the opposition parties, could on its own stop PAS in its tracks.

Out of 222 members of the Malaysian parliament, 88 are from Umno and 21 from PAS. Especially with Umno indicating that its members will vote with PAS, the trump card is not with DAP, with its 37 MPs. MCA should be barking at Big Brother Umno.

MCA’s anti-hudud propaganda is little more than an attempt to drive a wedge between the Pakatan Rakyat partners and to instill hatred among Muslims against DAP and PKR. The underlying assumption is that there are enough Muslims who have been indoctrinated by Umno to believe that DAP is a party for racist Chinese and PKR for ungrateful Indians and deviant Malays.

The accusation that DAP is in complicity with PAS in the hudud agenda is not only old stuff that MCA keeps recycling but also patently false.

No observer of Malaysian politics can be unaware that DAP has been consistently against not just hudud but any move to transform Malaysia into an Islamic state.

Further, it has been made clear more times than anyone can remember that DAP’s cooperation with PAS and PKR is limited to the objective of turning Malaysia into a land of justice, freedom, democracy and good governance.

The burning questions that MCA has yet to answer are these: Can MCA, the second largest party in Barisan Nasional, stop Umno’s 88 MPs from supporting the PAS bill? Why hasn’t any MCA leader censured Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Jamil Khir Baharom and Ketereh MP Annuar Musa for declaring their support of PAS’s move?

Rather than carrying on with a propaganda exercise that insults the intelligence of Malaysians, MCA leaders should be searching their souls and decide whether they will take the party out of BN if Umno’s MPs support the PAS bill, just like DAP left the Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah nearly 20 years ago when PAS refused to abandon its Islamic state agenda.

Memories may be short, but the current MCA leaders cannot have forgotten that in 2001, the then prime minister declared that Malaysia was an Islamic state.

DAP’s reaction to Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s declaration was swift. It sought an urgent parliamentary debate on the subject.

Contrast that with the waffling statement made by then MCA president Dr Ling Liong Sik:

“There are many questions in mind. Is Umno correct in declaring Malaysia an Islamic country or an Islamic nation or an Islamic state? We want to ask ourselves, ‘Can we call a country by two or three different names?’ My simplistic thinking: If we look at a rose—being English educated, I would call it a rose, but Chinese educated call it Mei Gui, a Malay friend calls it Bunga Mawar and Roja in Tamil—yet it is still a rose.”

It is nothing short of foolhardy for MCA to keep attacking DAP on the question of hudud, for it will only throw open the cupboard that keeps so many of its skeletons.

Stanley Koh is a former head of MCA’ research unit. He is now an FMT columnist.