Whilst the nation inches towards financial ruin…
THE PEOPLE’S PARLIAMENT
I have to confess that most times that Arthur engages me on the global capital markets, much of what he says is Greek to me.
Still very much a kampung boy, I guess.
Not so kampung boy, though, that I cannot make out from this report in the Malaysianinsider that the attention of the whole world is turned to how Europe and the US deal with their debt crisis that is threatening to wreak havoc in national economies worldwide.
Well, the whole world except, it would seem, in Kelantan.
Maybe even the whole country.
Certainly, though, Kelantan seems oblivious to the impending financial crisis.
Nik Aziz seems determined to see hudud made the paramount law of all Kelantanese who profess Islam as their religion.
And the law applicable to any Muslim passing through the state.
Prof Aziz Bari, as reported in Malaysiakini, seems dead certain that the majority of Kelantanese are all for hudud law being implemented in the state.
Why, he says, the government is even prepared to take a referendum to the people on this issue.
What’s not clear from the report is, firstly, whether by ‘majority of Kelantanese’, Aziz also meant the non-Muslim community, and, secondly, whether the Kelantanese non-Muslim community would also partake in any state-wide referendum on the issue?
What good, though, would such a referendum serve unless those who think it unwise to de-secularise Kelantan are given the widest possible berth to share those concerns with all the Kelantanese?
Will PAS allow for this?
Aziz is quoted as saying that he had the opportunity to listen to the sentiments of the grassroots and thereby discerned their inclination towards the implementation of hudud in the state.
It would have been good if, even as he sought their views on the hudud, Aziz had also elicited from that same grassroot their thoughts and concerns about the economic development or, more accurately, the near absence thereof, in the state.
Kelantan is, after all, ranked 5th amongst all the states in terms of the incidence of poverty.
As PAS pushes to implement hudud, do they also have a plan to uplift the economic lot of the impoverished Kelantanese?
That you do not need hudud law to rejuvenate the economy is exemplified by what the Pakatan state government has achieved in Penang these last 3 years.
Aziz postulates that there is no restriction in the constitution for the introduction and implementation of Islamic law, including the hudud.
His reasoning then, seems to be that as there is no such restriction and as the majority favour it, the will of the majority be done.
Aziz must concede that there is also no prohibition in the constitution for the introduction into law of any Christian precepts.
