Snubbing Pakatan’s request, Kelantan forges ahead with existing hudud bill

(Malay Mail Online) – Kelantan will not revise the proposed amendments to its hudud law and will table this during the state assembly sitting on Wednesday, said its deputy mentri besar.

This is despite the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) presidential council last Thursday urging the PAS-led state government to re-evaluate the proposed changes that were found to be substantially different from the existing enactment.

“No such thing. We presented the amendments to Pakatan and after the meeting, we (the Kelantan government) discussed the matter.

“The amendments to Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code Enactment II 1993 will be tabled on March 18,” Kelantan Deputy Mentri Besar Datuk Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah told Malay Mail Online when contacted.

“Not going to go back to meet Pakatan again. We have discussed and it will be tabled,” he added.

On Thursday, the PR presidential council told PAS to “reconsider” its proposed amendments to its Kelantan hudud bill, after the Islamist party shared the planned legislative changes with the opposition pact for the first time.

DAP’s Gobind Singh Deo, who was present at the PR presidential council meeting, had argued that the planned amendments were essentially an entirely new piece of legislation and not just minor updates to the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code Enactment II 1993 as previously claimed.

He added that PAS was requested to reconsider the proposed amendments and return with a revision for further discussions.

“But for DAP, we are still against these amendments, and our stand remains that the implementation of hudud is impractical and against Pakatan’s common policy framework,” Gobind said then.

The Kelantan state government reportedly plans to table amendments to the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code Enactment II 1993 at the state legislative assembly on March 18.

Details of the proposed amendments, however, have not been made public nor did the PAS-led state administration share copies of the bill with their PR partners until this week.

Both PKR and DAP are opposed to ally PAS’s bid to enforce hudud in Kelantan, which has instead found support from rival Umno.