Is Pakatan still relevant? PAS man asks after hudud tiff

(Malay Mail Online) – Pakatan Rakyat (PR) members should reassess their alliance as a whole and decide if it should continue, a PAS grassroots leader said today amid a partial breakdown over dissenting views on hudud.

Kamaruzaman Mohamad suggested there was no point keeping the opposition front intact if the parties could not reach a consensus on the hudud question.

“Although we have agreed to disagree on the hudud issue in Kelantan, if the test cannot be passed, then revisions need to be done,” the deputy commissioner of Federal Territories PAS told a news conference in Gombak.

He further noted that DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang has reached out to political foes from the Barisan Nasional (BN) government’s non-Muslim parties with a proposal for a new bipartisan coalition last week to stop the Islamic penal code from being carried out in Kelantan.

“Other parties need to review if PR is relevant… Kit Siang himself has already issued a statement, calling for the formation of a unity coalition.

“So this is the point where everything has to be reviewed. Can this cooperation be continued or not?” he asked.

However, in the same breath, Kamaruzaman urged the DAP not to let their “misunderstandings” over hudud drive a wedge between their parties to the detriment of their common goal.

“Hudud is a test for PR… after this, the biggest challenge is when we manage to topple BN,” he said,

PAS-ruled Kelantan passed key amendments to its Shariah Criminal Code II 1993 earlier this month  in a move to enable the eventual implementation of hudud in the Malay-majority east coast state.

All 12 Umno state lawmakers voted for the amendments but the ruling party’s national leadership has yet to declare if the same support would be given to PAS’s hudud ambition at the federal level.

The Islamist party’s president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang is also seeking to table a private member’s bill in Parliament to allow Kelantan to enforce the Islamic penal code, which the DAP argues goes against the secular nature of the Federal Constitution.