KUALA LUMPUR, May 16 — PAS and Umno have been touting an interest in rolling out hudud but political observers believe the two Malay-Muslim parties are merely playing a game to enhance their credentials among their majority vote base.
A spurt in Islamic activism in recent years have also seen fringe groups inch closer to the centre where both parties held court, and are now feeling the heat in their bid to outdo each other in piety outwardly, they observed.
“I think both sides are just simply playing politics. What will happen? My guess is PAS will say ‘we are waiting for Umno to start something’, Umno will say ‘PAS will say something’,” Wan Saiful Wan Jan told The Malay Mail Online.
“This is the stupidity of all these things. They continuously play to the gallery, entertain the voters but they do not realise they are creating a bad image for Islam itself,” the chief executive of think tank Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) added.
Former minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim said Malaysians must reject stupidity and bigotry and defend secular democracy against what he called Umno’s political games with PAS.
In a recent blog posting, the one-term de facto law minister accused Umno leaders of being too weak and afraid to explain to Muslim voters that hudud will only cause them hardship.
To defend a secular democracy, Zaid said that moderate members of Barisan Nasional (BN) must be prepared to abandon Umno, and suggested it would not be so bad if the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) also broke up over this issue.
Wan Saiful suggested that if either Malay-Muslim parties chose to steamroll their coalition partners to implement hudud, it would spell the end of the BN or PR.
“I think both sides, if they were to bring the bill to Parliament, PAS will break up Pakatan, and Umno will break up Barisan,” he said.
PAS, which has passed the Islamic penal code in the Kelantan state legislative assembly, recently sought to push two private member’s bills in Parliament to enforce the controversial law.
However, the Islamist opposition party said it would delay proposing the two bills pending a bipartisan talk with Putrajaya, after some Umno leaders said they were open to the idea.
Lim Teck Ghee, chief executive of the Centre for Policy Initiatives, has cast doubt on Umno’s sincerity to helping its archrival realise its ambition to set up an Islamic state.
The country’s biggest political party is always on the lookout to gain political brownie points, he noted.
“I hope both parties do not see this as a chess game,” he told The Malay Mail Online in an email interview.
“The public does not want the two parties to be engaged in looking for political gain from it,” Lim added.
PAS central committee member Khalid Samad acknowledged that hudud could be used as a political tool, but had no hangups if it could be used to “prove Umno’s hypocrisy to the Malays”.
“Umno may be baiting PAS with the issue of hudud in order to trap PAS.
“However, PAS can turn the tables on Umno on this matter and cause Umno to lose all credibility,” the Shah Alam MP said in a text message.
Khalid accused Umno of using hudud to burnish its Islamic credentials, noting that the party had only voiced its support “but at the same time doing nothing about it in Terengganu” where the BN had wrested power from PAS in Election 2004.
Umno minister Datuk Rahman Dahlan has denied his party has discussed the federal government would table the proposal, let alone support PAS’ private bills for hudud.
“It’s their baby, they started it, they should finish it. Why ask other people to fight their battle?” he asked.
The Sabah federal lawmaker said the bipartisan technical committee set up recently to study hudud was only to “check and understand” PAS’ hudud proposals as carrying out the Islamic criminal law concerned Umno and also non-Muslims in the country.
