KUALA LUMPUR, April 14 — Reminding PAS of Umno’s previous treachery, DAP’s Zairil Khir Johari today asked the Islamist party’s president why he was so ready to work with a foe that nearly wiped his party out through betrayal.
Lamenting Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s professed readiness to work with Umno in order to achieve his ambition for hudud, the DAP MP also told the PAS leader that the rival party’s support for the Islamic penal law was patently disingenuous.
“Does Hadi not question why Umno is willing to support PAS enforce hudud in Kelantan, when Umno shows absolutely no interest to table hudud Bills in the states it rules with two-thirds majorities?
“Further, Umno’s president continues to avoid stating his stand on hudud, while there are Umno ministers who openly reject the enforcement of hudud,” the Bukit Bendera lawmaker said in a statement.
Zairil said Hadi should be acquainted with Umno’s deceit in the 70s when it invited PAS into Barisan Nasional (BN) after losing Malay support in Election 1969, only to expel the Islamist party after winning big in the 1974 general election.
BN further “repaid” PAS by declaring an emergency in Kelantan to remove the Islamist party from the state administration, nearly wiping it out in its own home state, he added.
“What about the Memali Tragedy in 1985? If PAS wants to work with Umno, must they not first need to demand accountability for the death of Ustaz Ibrahim Libya and his followers?” Zairil asked.
The Memali incident involved a government siege on an Islamic sect in Baling during which 14 sect members and four policemen were killed, and believed to have been triggered by Hadi’s denouncement of Umno members as apostates for not practising hudud.
Zairil added that the difference between Hadi and previous PAS leaders such as Datuk Fadzil Noor and Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat was that the latter two had regularly reminded the party to be wary of Umno’s wiles.
Questioning Hadi’s rush to collaborate with his party’s rivals, Zairil then suggested that the Islamist party’s leader — like Umno — has an ulterior motive in pushing for hudud.
“Is hudud the only thing that can save him in the coming Muktamar, seeing as there is no other success that he can lean on?” he said in his statement.
On Saturday, Hadi said it did not matter if Umno was deceitful in its support for PAS as long as the Islamist party achieves its goal for hudud to be enforced in Kelantan.
“Umno wants to co-operate with us then we co-operate. Whether or not they are sincere let Allah decide,” he said during a PAS forum then.
Before that Hadi took a swipe at the DAP, suggesting that his party had no choice but to work with Umno as its own allies had rejected outright the idea of having hudud in Kelantan or Malaysia.
Kelantan’s state assembly approved the Shariah Criminal Code (II) (1993) 2015 Enactment last month with 31 votes from PAS lawmakers supported by 12 from Umno.
However, in order to enforce the amended state Shariah criminal laws, PAS-led Kelantan needs bipartisan support from Umno and other federal lawmakers to pass Hadi’s two Private Members’ Bills in the Dewan Rakyat.
Hadi served notice to Parliament on the proposed Bills on March 18, but parliamentary affairs minister Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim confirmed earlier this week that the hudud debate has been deferred to the next Dewan Rakyat session in May.
