Pakatan Harapan must take a stand on Hudud
Will Pakatan Harapan openly announce that if they ever take Kelantan from PAS and Terengganu from Umno they are going to withdraw the Sharia Amendment Bills in those two states?
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Pakatan asked to take stand on hudud, PAS
(Free Malaysia Today) – Several lawyers have called for the newly-formed opposition pact, Pakatan Harapan , to take a stand on hudud law and PAS.
Lawyer Haniff Khatri Abdulla said that they should take a stand so that they are united, and not end up like the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat. “The previous pact split because they had no consistent stand, with PAS being pro-hudud and DAP taking an anti-hudud stand.”
“This happened once. They should not let it happen again,” he said.
Haniff added the public have the right to know. “People vote for the party and person. They must know what’s the party’s policy.”
“If Amanah, the party formed by PAS dissidents, later takes a stand that they are pro-hudud, would there be another feud again?” he asked.
Although Pakatan Harapan was officially launched last week, they were hesitant on taking a unanimous stand on hudud and PAS.
Lawyer New Sin Yew has also been reduced to wondering how Pakatan Harapan can convince the voters if they have no consensus on hudud. “Hudud, or Islamic criminal law, is going to affect many people if it is implemented.”
“For a political party which aspires to be the next government of Malaysia, they have to be decisive.”
New said Pakatan Harapan should give a collective “yes” or “no” on the hudud issue.
Lawyer Sankara Nair also said Pakatan Harapan should give an “aye” or “nay” on the issue. “Just as what Zaid (Ibrahim) said, be brave and state the stand,” he said. “Although hudud is a law for Muslims, non-Muslims are ‘scared’ the law is going to affect all Malaysians.”
“The people are concerned if the law is going to affect them.”
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Sometimes I do not know whether I am the only person is Malaysia with a vision. I know that sounds pompous but five years ago back in 2010 I said what many people are saying today. The only difference is when I said all this more than five years ago I was the only one saying it and I was whacked kau-kau for saying it. Now we have so many ‘learned’ and ‘liberated’ people repeating my words.
My conflict and eventual fallout with Anwar Ibrahim was precisely about this issue. Pakatan Rakyat (now called Pakatan Harapan — and before that Barisan Alternatif) never really had a common stand since 1999. How can you share the same bed and yet, as the Malays would say, tidur satu bantal, mimpi lain-lain.
And that is why we are seeing three coalitions in almost 17 years while Barisan Nasional has remained the same for more than 40 years, except for the fact that PAS left the ruling coalition about 40 years ago. However, we have seen the opposition form Gagasan Rakyat, Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah, Barisan Alternatif, Pakatan Rakyat, and now Pakatan Harapan — and all that over a period of just 25 years.
I told Anwar that Pakatan will not last based on the doctrine of agree to disagree while at the same time announce that if they do anything it must be based on consensus. And consensus means all three must agree before it is done — and if all three do not agree then they will not do it and will agree to disagree.
What in hell does that mean? That, to me, is a recipe for disaster.
What if two of the partners want a by-election in Kajang and one does not agree to that? Do they agree to disagree and not hold a by-election or do the two ignore the third and still proceed with a by-election?
What if two of the partners want the Selangor Menteri Besar replaced and one does not agree to that? Do they agree to disagree and not replace the Selangor Menteri Besar or do the two ignore the third and still proceed with replacing the Menteri Besar?
What if two of the partners want Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as the new Selangor Menteri Besar and one does not agree to that? Do they agree to disagree and not propose Dr Wan Azizah as the Selangor Menteri Besar or do the two ignore the third and still proceed with proposing her as the new Menteri Besar?
That is only one issue regarding the ‘Kajang Move’. There are so many other issues, which are actually far more complex than the simple ‘Kajang Move’. And once we start opening up this can of worms you can see that the agree-to-disagree and do-things-based-on-consensus doctrine does not work.
But that is Anwar Ibrahim for you. He has always been like this from way back. When he has a problem that he cannot solve he sweeps it under the carpet and ignores it. He hopes that the cancer would go away all by itself like a common cold and in time the sickness would cure itself.
But cancers are never like that and we all know that in time you will die from that cancer. And Pakatan Rakyat died — just like Barisan Alternatif did before that (and Gagasan Rakyat and Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah even earlier).
Nevertheless, for bringing all this up I was branded as a traitor? Traitor? Traitor to whom? Traitor to Anwar Ibrahim? How can I be a traitor to Anwar when in the first place I was never an Anwar loyalist? You first need to be a loyalist before you can be a traitor. I am an Abdul Hadi Awang loyalist and have been since the late 1970s, long before Anwar joined Umno in 1982.
Let me put it another way. If you are a Malaysian citizen and you betray the country then you can be called a traitor. But if you make a move against Singapore how can Singapore call you a traitor when you are not a citizen of that island-state?
My quarrel with Anwar was actually not in 2010 but way back in 2004. Dato’ Kamarul Baharin Abbas of PKR can confirm this because he was there in Ipoh when I quarrelled with Anwar and washed my hands of both Anwar and PKR.
Then, in 2006, I worked with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad when he made his move to topple Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. In 2007, I got involved with Bersih in our effort to push for electoral reforms. We then organised the first Bersih rally in November 2007 where we sent a petition to Istana Negara with a list of the electoral reforms that we wanted.
All this had nothing to do with Anwar or PKR.
In 2008, my good friend Ronnie Liu of DAP asked for my help to campaign in Pandamaran, Port Kelang, where he was contesting, and I agreed to help him. That seat had always been a MCA seat and his opponent was the Selangor MCA chief (and we won that seat). Ronnie then ‘lent’ me to other DAP seats to help the campaign there as well, places in Penang included.
But I was in Ronnie’s campaign, not PKR’s or Pakatan Rakyat’s. When PKR and PAS contacted me and asked to help in their campaign I declined. I told them I was exclusive to Ronnie. Then Nurul Izzah Anwar’s people contacted me and asked to help campaign in Lembah Pantai. I also declined until Ronnie told me to go help Nurul Izzah.
Anyway, when I spoke to Anwar in 2010 he refused to listen. Instead he openly whacked me. So in that same year I whacked him openly as well. And that was the infamous TV3 interview that I did in Perth, Australia, where I said openly what I had been saying privately for six years since 2004.
So now many are also saying what I had been saying for more than five years. But they are talking about just one issue: Hudud. Are they saying that the disagreement on Hudud is the one and only thing that threatens the solidarity and unity of Pakatan Harapan? That may be what many view as the most important issue but that is not really the most important issue or the only issue.
What these ‘learned’ and ‘liberated’ people do not understand is that Hudud is not the problem. Hudud is the by-product of another problem. The problem is actually something else. And that ‘something else’ problem gives birth to the problem of Hudud.
There are actually many other problems that are also by-products of another problem. For example, the death rate on Malaysian roads on a per capita basis is ten times that of the UK. Is it because Malaysians drive Protons whereas in the UK they drive better cars? No! It is because of corruption. In Malaysia most people ‘buy’ their driving licence while in the UK they do not.
So do not look at the death rate on Malaysian roads as a problem and then try to solve that problem. You need to first solve the problem of corruption and then the death rate would come down. Installing traffic cameras like they do in the UK would be another good move. But when you do not understand the source of the problem and then try to cure the symptoms rather than the disease you will never really get rid of the problem.
Pakatan Harapan talks about the problem of race and religion. Of course those are problems in Malaysia. But then why are they problems? They are problems because we allow them to remain a problem and subscribe to the doctrine of agreeing to disagree because we know there can never be a consensus anyway.
That is called sweeping the dirt under the carpet and pretending that it no longer exists. And that was Pakatan Rakyat.
But now Rafizi Ramli says Pakatan Harapan has abandoned the old Pakatan Rakyat agree-to-disagree doctrine. That is well and fine. That is what I have been asking them to do since 2010. But what have they replaced it with?
Let us take beauty contests as one example. Amanah, just like PAS, wants beauty contests banned. Do PKR and DAP agree with this? If PKR and DAP do not agree with this then we have both of them on the other side of Amanah and PAS. How do PKR and DAP feel about Amanah taking the same stand as PAS regarding beauty contests?
What about Bahasa Malaysia Bibles using the Allah word? What about the two-dozen or so ‘Islamic’ words that non-Muslims are banned from using? What about the issue of children from broken marriages where one spouse is Muslim and the other is not? Who gets the children?
These are but a handful of so many issues that plague the country. And trust me on this one: we need the political will and a political solution to solve all these problems. Does Pakatan Harapan have that political will and the political solution?
So, Pakatan Harapan will no longer agree to disagree. So what is it they will then do? The voters would need to know before they go to the polls in 2018 or so.
DAP says it is not a Chinese party but a multi-racial party. And to prove it they are going to field Malay candidates in Malay-majority seats. But they will still field Chinese candidates in Chinese-majority seats.
So this means DAP admits that Malaysian politics is still about race and religion. That is why they are going to field Malay candidates in Malay-majority seats and Chinese candidates in Chinese-majority seats. If not they would field Chinese candidates in Kelantan and Malay candidates on Penang Island.
Come the next election Barisan Nasional will still be seen as Umno-Malay led and Pakatan Harapan as DAP-Chinese led. DAP knows this, as do PKR and Amanah. So they are creating this smokescreen of DAP fielding more Malay candidates. But they will field these Malay candidates in just the Malay seats and not the hardcore Chinese seats.
That is what DAP’s multi-racial politics is all about. And they are hoping that the Malay voters will buy this ploy.
So the ‘learned’ and ‘liberated’ people in Free Malaysia Today’s news item above say that Pakatan Harapan needs to resolve the Hudud issue before the next general election. They think that this is the one and only issue that threatens the future of Pakatan Harapan and if they can solve this then Malaysia is going to have a new federal government in 2018.
I hate to burst their bubble but Hudud is not really the issue. It is being used as an issue to attack PAS just like 1MDB is being used as the issue to attack Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. Even if Amanah openly announces that it is opposed to Hudud, just like PKR and DAP are, that is not the end of the problem.
Will Pakatan Harapan openly announce that if they ever take Kelantan from PAS and Terengganu from Umno they are going to withdraw the Sharia Amendment Bills in those two states?
Let us start from there. Tell us that Amanah, PKR and DAP unanimously agree that when and if they manage to take Kelantan from PAS and Terengganu from Umno they are going to withdraw the Sharia Amendment Bills in those two states. Then we will know that this is the beginning of a viable opposition coalition.
But I only said ‘the beginning of a viable opposition coalition’. That is only the start. Then we need Pakatan Harapan to tell us what they plan to do about the 100 other issues that Malaysians are not happy about. Then, and only then, would I agree that Pakatan Harapan has a good chance of forming the next federal government. If not it is just going to be the same shit on another day.
