Hold back support for PAS until it drops hudud plan, says DAP man

(The Star) – A DAP member has asked non-Muslims, particularly the Chinese, to hold back their support for PAS until the party withdraws unconditionally its plans of tabling any Private Members Bill to implement its brand of hudud.

Norman Fernandez urged the Chinese to send a loud and clear message to PAS that the Chinese would not vote for the party as long as it did not subscribe to the Common Manifesto Platform, which makes no mention of hudud.

PAS, he said, must realise that there was real danger that it could lose all of its four state seats in Johor.

“Already, Puteri Wangsa is almost a certainty to be lost but that is because the electorate is still upset with the PAS assemblyman for proposing the change to the weekend in Johor. The voters in the area are now biding time to get rid of PAS there,” the former Johor DAP deputy chief said in a statement.

He said PAS was “nailing its own coffin” if it continued to persist on the implementation of hudud.

Fernandez said in Johor, all the four seats that PAS won – Parit Yaani, Maharani, Sg Abong and Puteri Wangsa – had a considerable number of Chinese voters.

“There is no denying that PAS won these seats on the strength and support of the Chinese,” he added.

Fernandez made headlines just before GE13 last year when he dropped a bombshell in his article on a blog by dramatically urging voters to reject PAS in the general election, saying the state could not risk its future with the Islamist party.

In his latest statement, he said it had only taken a mere five days for PAS to do another U-turn in announcing that the party would postpone its plans to table the Bill on hudud in Kelantan.

Fernandez said as far as PAS was concerned, despite the opposition of its partners in Pakatan Rakyat and particularly DAP and the objection by the Chinese community, the party still remained on course with its plans to table the Bill.