Yong: Hudud move will tear Malaysia apart

Eastern states will see it as Malaya going its own way, says opposition leader

KUALA LUMPUR: Kelantan’s hudud law will rip Malaysia apart even without any move towards secession of Sabah and Sarawak, according to two Sabah opposition politicians.

Instead, the hudud issue could be seen as West Malaysia (or Malaya as it is sometimes still called in the east) drifting apart from the two Borneo states.

Sabah opposition leader Yong Teck Lee said the peninsula would be in contravention of the Malaysia Agreement of 1963 if hudud criminal penalties became part of syariah law in Kelantan.

The peninsula would no longer be seen as being part of Malaysia, he said, according to Malay Mail Online. Whether or not there was any call for a referendum on secession, “Malayan hudud law will lead to the eventual separation of Malaya from Sabah and Sarawak,” he was quoted as saying.

It would not be a case of Sabah and Sarawak leaving the federation, but more of West Malaysia separating itself, the report said.

“Hudud law is so fundamentally against the concept of Malaysia. It will make Malaysia unrecognisable from the 1963 agreement, whereas Sabah and Sarawak remain more Malaysia than Malaya,” Yong was quoted as saying. “So it would be Malaya leaving Malaysia and not Sabah and Sarawak leaving the Federation.”

Jeffrey Kitingan, assemblyman for Bingkor, who was once accused by the federal government of plotting secession for Sabah, said the hudud issue alone would not give rise to secessionist sentiments but would fuel rising anger towards the federal government about erosion of Borneo states’ rights.

“The declining tolerance of Sabahans and Sarawakians over their dissatisfaction may lead towards demand for separation,” he said, Malay Mail Online reported.

Talk of a referendeum on independence of the Borneo states had arisen earlier in the week when former Inspector-General of Police Abdul Rahim Noor, who negotiated an end to the communist insurgency in West Malaysia in the late 1980s, said hudud in Kelantan may lead Sabah and Sarawak to move towards separation.

The two states had never agreed to Islamic law when Malaysia was formed, he said.

He had pointed out that Sabah and Sarawak, where the majority of bumiputeras are Christian, had in the negotiation on forming Malaysia been opposed to Islam being stated as the religion of the federation in the Federal Constitution.

Civil society groups in Sabah and Sarawak have recently stated their opposition to the plans by the PAS-led Kelantan government’s intention to impose hudud criminal penalties in the state, and had called it a betrayal of trust in forming Malaysia.