KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 15 — The Kelantan state government’s plan to amend its Shariah laws to pave the way for hudud to be implemented will only work against PAS and its partners in Pakatan Rakyat (PR), failing to win over the majority of Malay voters while alienating their non-Malay peers, Lim Kit Siang warned today.
The senior DAP leader claimed that it was clear from the results of past national polls that the Islamist party’s long-held desire to implement hudud has worked against them.
“In fact, hudud can be the cause for Pakatan Rakyat not only losing the battle for Putrajaya, but also losing Kelantan — as well as wiping out all the gains that PAS had made outside its traditional stronghold states, like Johor, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Pahang, Selangor, Perak and Penang,” Lim said in a statement.
Yesterday, Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Yakob announced that the state legislative assembly would hold a special sitting on December 29 to table and pass amendments to the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code II, otherwise referring to hudud law.
He told a news conference that the move was necessary to enable their move to table in Parliament a private member’s bill on the implementation of hudud.
Lim today stressed that they need only look at the opposition’s experience in Terengganu to see that hudud will work against them.
The Gelang Patah MP noted that both PAS and PKR suffered in the 11th general election in 2004, losing seven out of eight parliamentary seats and retaining just four out of 28 state seats after having passed the state hudud enactment in 2001 when they were in power.
Terengganu PAS’ continued focus on hudud in its Barisan Alternatif Terengganu manifesto ahead of GE12 in 2008 also failed to help either PAS or PKR regain any ground they had lost in the previous electoral contest, Lim added.
He claimed that it was only after the issue had been toned down within the PR framework that PAS and PKR managed to win four out of the eight parliamentary seats and 15 out of the 32 state seats contested in Terengganu in last year’s national polls.
“If hudud becomes an issue in the 14GE, PR will not only lose in Putrajaya, there is also a possibility that PAS will lose in Kelantan,” Lim said.
The DAP has staunchly opposed PAS’ plans to implement hudud in Kelantan and has repeatedly demanded that the party shelve its plans, with its leaders even warning of an imminent break-up of the PR alliance if the Islamist party refuses to back down.
Hudud, however, is enshrined in PAS’ party constitution. The Kelantan PAS-led government has declared that it will push for amendments to the Federal Constitution to be able to implement the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code Enactment II passed by the state assembly in 1993.
That year, the then-PAS government successfully tabled and passed the enactment to implement hudud, but the strict Islamic penal code has not been enforced due to conflicts with the Federal Constitution.
Kelantan formed a hudud technical committee after the state government announced in April that it is gearing up to present two private members’ bills to Parliament, hoping to remove all obstacles to its implementation of the hudud law in Kelantan by 2015.
But PAS is facing unyielding resistance from both its PR partners, PKR and DAP, and has said it hopes to get the necessary votes from Umno MPs in order to get the bill approved.
