KOTA BARU, March 19 — The Kelantan State Legislative Assembly passed today amendments to the Shariah Criminal Code II 1993 to pave way for the controversial implementation of hudud laws in the state.
43 assemblyman from both PAS and Umno voted to pass the Bill while the sole PKR representative abstained.
The success means PAS is just one step closer to achieving its hudud ambition after it first introduced the Bill in 1993.
The second move will be to seek approval to amend the Federal Constitution to allow hudud to be incorporated into Kelantan’s Shariah laws.
While it failed to get support in 1993, PAS is confident that it can muster the numbers to tweak the Constitution after Umno, likely due to political consideration, said it would back the move.
PAS will attempt to make the amendment to the Shariah provisions under Article 75 (1) of the Federal Constitution through the private members bill.
Commenting on the matter outside the House, Deputy Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Nik Amar said PAS will try and move the private members bill “as soon as possible”.
However, no timeline was given.
“We see how first. We have ample of time. The elections is in three years time,” he said jokingly when asked to give a timeline.
Nik Amar said Kelantan will first try and get parliamentary support to amend the Shariah Courts 1965 (Act 355) to expand its powers to mete out hudud punishments for the four offences defined under its Shariah Criminal Code.
He said the PAS government will only need a simple parliamentary majority to do this.
“If we can't get (our Shariah courts to cover six of the Hudud offences we can just get four first. And if we can amend this then some of the hudud laws can be implemented by this year”.
Act 355 of the Shariah Courts 1965 already have provisions for punishment for Shariah offences but only limits them to imprisonment not exceeding three years or fine not exceeding RM5,000 or caning not exceeding six strokes or a combination thereof.
The four offences are adultery (zina), sodomy (liwat), apostasy (murtad), and alcohol consumption.
Should Kelantan want to expand the Shariah Criminal Court jurisdiction to cover theft and qazaf (false accusation of adultery, it would require the amendment to Article 76 (1) of the Federal Constitution.
This would require two-third majority.
Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Yakob in his winding up speech on the tabling of the hudud bill said while Kelantan may not be able to get that much support at federal level, it will continue to try its best.
“We have done as much as we can but should this be insufficient then let us hope the next generation of leaders will carry this on,” he said.
