Barisan making a blunder if it thinks hudud can help it stay in power, says academic
(TMI) – If Barisan Nasional (BN) thinks it could exploit the hudud issue to cling on to power, it is a making a huge mistake because the ruling coalition’s power base no longer lies in the peninsula, a hudud roundtable heard today.
1Malaysia Foundation chairman Dr Chandra Muzaffar said BN’s power base has now shifted to Sabah and Sarawak.
“The present leadership has blundered in handling the hudud issue, where it has not shown enough judgment, understanding or maturity,” Chandra said.
“And even if it was in relation to power, this is a total blunder because BN’s power base today is in Sabah and Sarawak. If this base shifts away, then BN will collapse,” he said in response to a question from Islamic Renaissance Front chairman Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa on why the government was enticing PAS on hudud.
Chandra said in the case of Sabah and Sarawak, the large indigenous Christian population there would simply reject hudud.
This message was reiterated by Sarawak Governor Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, who had made it clear that the state would not accept the peninsula’s approach to matters such as hudud.
“Even the Muslims there will not accept it because they are integrated, so this is a blunder and I don’t know how BN is going to extricate itself from it.”
BN, Chandra said, should weigh the consequences of playing politics with something as serious like hudud.
“If Umno is in the hudud game, it is more because of politics. In the case of PAS, it is dogma,” he said, adding that Umno had not subscribed to hudud as dogma since 1946.
No prime minister since Tunku Abdul Rahman had supported the implementation of hudud.
Chandra was among the panellists at a roundtable discussion on the implementation of hudud in Kelantan organised by the Global Movement of Moderates.
He also said Malaysia was one of the few countries that treated a fatwa as sacrosanct. Muslims are under no obligation to follow a fatwa because it is not a sacred law.
