DAP stays in Pakatan but ends ties with PAS’s Hadi

DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng says DAP has decided yesterday to end ties and cease to work with PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang. – Pic courtesy of DAP, March 24, 2015.

DAP says today it will end all ties with PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, a move which puts the opposition pact, Pakatan Rakyat, in limbo.

DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said the DAP central executive committee meeting last night had decided to "end ties and cease to work" with Hadi although it remained committed to PR. The party will discuss the pact's future with PKR.

"DAP is unable to work with a PAS president like Hadi Awang who persists in such dishonest and dishonourable acts," Lim said in a statement today.

"As Hadi is the PAS leader in PR, DAP's decision to end all ties with Hadi will effectively put the PR leadership council in limbo. DAP will meet the PKR leadership to discuss the future course of PR," he said. 

Explaining the party's reasons for ending ties with Hadi, Lim said he had first, betrayed the collective decision made by the PR leadership council on the nomination of PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail last year as the sole candidate as the new Selangor menteri besar after Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim was sacked from PKR.

Lim said Hadi's betrayal, by unilaterally nominating three PAS assemblymen instead, had "resulted in a full-blown and protracted crisis" that threatened to bring down the PR Selangor government.

Hadi had also failed to honour his own words at the leadership council meeting on February 8, where it was agreed that Kelantan PAS's hudud bill to amend the state's Shariah Criminal Code Enactment II (1993) would first be discussed by all three PR party leaders, before it was tabled in the legislative assembly.

And third, Lim said Hadi had gone ahead to submit a private member's bill on March 18 to Parliament without presenting it first to the PAS central committee and to the PR leadership council.

Lim said these actions showed that Hadi was "cooperating with Umno to violate this spirit of consensus as well as the common policy framework", actions which he said jeopardised the opposition pact.

Affirming DAP's commitment to PR, Lim also stressed that the party's 37 federal lawmakers would oppose Hadi's private member's bill should it be raised in Parliament.

Lim also reminded Prime Minister Datuk Seri Naji Razak to make a clear stand whether Barisan Nasional (BN) opposed or supported Kelantan's hudud enactment, and whether the prime minister supported Hadi's private member's bill.

The DAP leader said it was Umno who had instigated PAS to push for hudud law in Kelantan by promising federal government support.

The Kelantan legislature unanimously passed the amendments to the state's hudud enactment on March 19.

DAP and PKR cried foul, saying the amendments were more than just a few changes as PAS initially promised, and were in fact a new law.

Lim said Najib must also explain why Umno's 12 assemblymen in the Kelantan assembly had voted in support of hudud.

PAS's insistence on hudud almost became a catalyst for PR to split but some have said that breaking up the opposition would only serve BN's agenda.

- TMI