KUALA LUMPUR, May 18 — Politicians are using religious issues such as hudud to strengthen their power base even if it means pushing the country to the brink, panelists at a forum titled “Hudud - A Nation At Crossroads” said yesterday.

In a quest to “entrench their own powers” politicians are gambling with Malaysia’s future, prominent lawyer Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan said

By pushing for hudud, a deeply “divisive” issue, the Islamist party PAS may be misplacing priorities, she added.

“Our focus should be addressing questions of corruption, addressing abuses of power, addressing all the real social problems,” the former co-chair of polls reform group Bersih 2.0 said.

“I wonder sometimes if this is just a red herring to take our attention off these.”

Ambiga also championed the separation of religion and state, observing that religion was already playing “too big a role” in Malaysia’s state affairs.

The forum on hudud  is the second organised by MCA in recent weeks following PAS’s plans to seek parliamentary for laws enabling the Islamic criminal code to be enforced in Kelantan.

The seven-strong panel also included former Malaysian Bar president Lim Chee Wee, Council of Churches Malaysia (CCM) general secretary Rev Hermen Shastri, Buddhist Missionary Society of Malaysia advisor Datuk Ang Choo Hong and MCA leader Gan Ping Sieu.

Dr Oh Ei Sun, an academic based in Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said religious issues had been whipped up over recent years to fulfil a “numbers game” where politicians seek to shore up their support in the Malay community.

Since the elections in 2008, Malay voters have been shown to be almost equally split between Umno, PAS and PKR, with the former two parties standing to gain support easily by playing up religious issues, he said.

“It boils down to political calculations,” he said during the forum.

PAS has postponed its plans to table two private members’ bill in Parliament to remove legal obstacles to hudud, pending a study by a proposed bipartisan technical committee.

The panellists urged the public to continue discussions on hudud, saying that they could press MPs representing them to point out that the strict Islamic code is at odds with the Federal Constitution.