PETALING JAYA, Jan 18 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) will soon meet to discuss the PAS-led Kelantan government’s temporarily stalled plan to amend state laws for the purpose of implementing hudud there, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said today.
Anwar said PR had previously agreed in 2010 that political allies PAS and DAP would be free to state their parties’ individual and conflicting views regarding hudud, but a consensus would first have to be reached before the pact makes a formal stand on the issue.
Anwar said there was a need to seek fresh consensus in PR over the Kelantan government’s proposed state legislation to pave the way for the implementation of hudud there.
“That’s why we ask that the draft of the Kelantan enactment be given so we can table and discuss.
“But that has not happened, maybe in a short time... Kelantan may be too busy dealing with the floods,” he said when asked about Kelantan’s planned rollout of hudud during a dialogue session with youths here.
Later, Anwar told reporters that the PR presidential council will meet when all the leaders of the three parties are ready, saying it could be at the end of this month or next month.
Last year, the PAS led-Kelantan government was forced to postpone the state legislative assembly’s December 29 special sitting to table and pass amendments to the Kelantan Shariah Criminal Code Enactment II 1993 due to the severe flood crisis that saw thousands evacuated from their homes in six states.
The special assembly was said to be aimed at allowing PAS to initiate its plan to table in Parliament a private member’s bill to amend the Federal Constitution, which would subsequently allow Kelantan to enforce hudud, a strict Islamic penal code that includes punishments like amputation and death by stoning.
Lawyers have said hudud — which covers crimes like rape, sodomy, theft and robbery — is unconstitutional as criminal law falls under federal jurisdiction according to the Federal Constitution.
On January 4, Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Yakob told Malay Mail Online that the state is unlikely to hold a special state assembly sitting on hudud laws before Parliament sits in March.
He had then said the PAS state government has not set a new date for the sitting and will only hold the sitting after everything is restored in the flood-hit state.
