KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 28 — Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Yaakob called on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak at the latter’s office in Putrajaya this morning, according to national news agency Bernama.
The agency confirmed the meeting in a one-line statement on its news wire here. The agenda and outcome of the meeting has yet to be reported.
On Monday, Najib announced that he had accepted the PAS leader’s invitation to meet soon.
The remark from Najib, who is also the head of Umno and the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN), came after PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang said on Sunday that the Islamist opposition party is willing to sit down with Umno on the implementation of an Islamic administration in the country.
“I’m meeting the Mentri Besar of Kelantan soon because he’s requested to meet me,” Najib told reporters after launching the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC), but did not elaborate further.
Hadi had said at the PAS annual congress on Sunday that if Umno says “they are committed to implement an administration that is based on Islam, let us ‘muzakarah’ (sit down and talk).”
The PAS chief also said that PAS would go ahead with implementing hudud laws in Kelantan, irrespective of whether its Pakatan Rakyat (PR) ally, the DAP, agreed to it or not.
DAP chairman Karpal Singh reportedly said recently that the DAP was firm in its stand that hudud law should not be implemented and that Malaysia should not be turned into an Islamic state.
Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (ISMA), however, has also offered to step in to facilitate a discussion between PAS and Umno in an attempt to implement Islamic administration in Malaysia, a multi-cultural country.
Predicting resistance from PAS’ and Umno’s allies in both PR and BN, ISMA also told the two parties to stand up to any pressure from others, such as the DAP in the opposition pact, and MCA and MIC in the ruling coalition.
ISMA deputy president Aminuddin Yahya said that Umno should accept PAS’ offer to dialogue, noting that this would show the ruling party’s sincerity in making Muslim unity “a reality”.
Buried in the run-up to the 13 general election, PAS had dusted off the covers on hudud at its annual congress to discuss revising the Federal Constitution to make the strict Islamic penal code a part of federal law.
The Islamist party’s ulama wing had even called on PAS to leverage its membership in the PR federal opposition to implement Islamic law in the states administered by the pact.
In stressing its call for PAS to re-examine its partnership with DAP and PKR, the wing consisting of Islamic clerics questioned whether it has benefited Islam, even as they conceded that it has succeeded politically.
But last Friday, party delegates came out strongly in the PAS muktamar (annual conference) to reaffirm their wish to stay in the federal opposition pact, citing success in the May 5 general election in which the ruling BN coalition were denied the popular vote for the first time since 1969.
On the same day, Abdul Hadi conceded that the party has never felt that it is a “passenger” in the coalition, even as he admitted that the “tahaluf siyasi” is yet to be perfected.
The term “tahaluf siyasi” that means “political consensus” and is used to describe PAS’s working arrangement with its allies in PR.
