Pakatan brand name meaningless if DAP, PKR cave in to PAS: Trio still see future together despite Hadi, hudud

KUALA LUMPUR - The federal opposition is again at a crossroads, with PAS once more on the defensive against vehement protests by Pakatan Rakyat partners DAP and PKR over the Islamist party’s renewed push for hudud law.

Politicians from the pact admitted that the current impasse over PAS’s insistence on enforcing the Islamic penal code in Kelantan could potentially be the last straw for the coalition, as those for and against hudud remain stubbornly rooted in their positions.

“The continuous attempts by PAS to implement hudud is certainly something that is weakening PR by the day,” DAP’s Puchong MP Gobind Singh Deo told Malay Mail Online when contacted.

“It all comes back to the common agreement among PR parties inked in 2008. If we spearheaded our campaigns along the lines of the agreement and the general support received by PR from people across the country was based on that, then PAS has to respect that agreement now.

“It cannot backtrack on it and call for hudud when it knew that the law was clearly objected to by DAP and PKR,” he said.

Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Yakob previously announced that the state legislative assembly will hold a special sitting on December 29 to table and pass amendments to the Kelantan Shariah Criminal Code Enactment II.

The move is in preparation for PAS’s plan to table in Parliament a private member’s bill to amend the Federal Constitution and allow Kelantan to implement the Shariah Criminal Code Enactment II passed by the state assembly in 1993.

In Islamic jurisprudence, hudud covers crimes such as theft, robbery, adultery, rape and sodomy. Punishments for the crimes are severe, including amputation, flogging and death by stoning.

PAS’s Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad acknowledged that hudud is not part of PR’s common policy framework, but stressed that its partners must understand that PAS made a pledge to the people of Kelantan to implement hudud over 20 years ago, when it won control of the state in 1990.

He further conceded that PAS’s hudud plan could spell trouble for the opposition pact, especially if DAP does not “handle this issue wisely”, but ultimately blamed Umno for allegedly creating the imbroglio in the first place.

By promising to support PAS’s private member bill in Parliament, Khalid claimed Umno has laid a trap to damage ties among PR parties, since the Islamist party does not have the numbers to push the bill through on its own.

“If we say yes, then we are dependent on Umno, and if we say no, then the people in Kelantan will say PAS is all talk. So in a way, we are now in a Catch-22 situation.

“Umno was the one who made the proposal, which I believe was purely for the sake of creating dissention within PR and this is something PR needs to take into consideration,” he said.

Both Gobind and Khalid, however, agreed that there is still much that PR can draw from in terms of common goals at the national level to keep the informal pact together.

PKR’s Penampang MP Darell Leiking also believed that PR will survive the hudud crisis, but reminded his colleagues in the peninsula that decisions on national issues cannot be made by them alone.

Darell argued that the answer to the hudud impasse is clearly stated in the 1963 Malaysia Agreement, insisting that part of the deal was that there would be “no imposition of religious laws or a change in the dynamics of how the nation is administered”.

“We have always remained secular and must remain so. The Federal Constitution is clear. We already recognised shariah laws and it is enough for Muslims.

“I don’t think hudud should be brought up because it was not the intention of our founding fathers,” he said.

Continued public bickering over hudud has prompted DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang to question if the PR pact can even remain intact until the next general election, much less take Putrajaya as it threatened to do in Election 2013.

The increasingly acrimonious exchanges are reminiscent of the short-lived Barisan Alternatif — formed to take on Barisan Nasional in Election 1999 — which broke up in 2001 when DAP pulled out citing irreconcilable differences with PAS for its insistence on creating an Islamic state. - Malay Mail