RUU355: down to Muslims versus non-Muslims

The complication surrounding the RUU355 has been removed. If you think this is what Allah wants then vote accordingly. If you think this is not what Allah wants then vote against it. It is now up to each Muslim Member of Parliament to decide. Hadi can only drag the horse to water. He cannot force the horse to drink. That is the long and short of it all. And removing ‘The Government’ from the equation was probably the most brilliant move yet.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Anwar Ibrahim’s greatest ‘deficit’ is he projects himself as a hypocrite. He says one thing to one audience and says the opposite to another audience. That can work back in the 1970s when he launched his political career but, today, with the information revolution, you cannot say things and get away with it. Within seconds what you do or say will go viral.

And that is what happens when you try to please everyone at the same time. It is impossible to be everything to everyone. You need to choose your platform and stick to it. For example, you cannot speak to a crowd of Islamists and say you support Hudud and the next day speak to a crowd of liberals and say you support gay marriages. When both your statements come out on YouTube you will be dead meat. Both sides will reject you.

A farmer will pray for rain. But it has to be the right amount of rain at the right time or else the crops would fail. A fisherman would curse the rain because that would reduce the number of days he can ‘turun ke laut’ or go fishing. In Terengganu, when it rains too much and for too long, the fishermen cannot afford to wait for better weather so they go out to sea under dangerous conditions. And boats capsize and people die.

Son against father: Mujahid from PAN, whose father supported Hudud, is opposed to the Sharia Amendment Bill or RUU355 like all PAN people

So, what is considered a blessing from God for one person is a curse to another. Even God cannot please everyone at the same time, what more we mere humans. And humans, by nature, are selfish (they will pray to God only if they are guaranteed a reward). Humans only want what is good for them or what benefits them and do not care two hoots whether that may be bad for other people. Development is good for the capitalists because it means more profits but is bad for the residents because it means more congestion and traffic jams. But then those capitalists do not live in your neighbourhood so it does not matter.

When it was first announced that ‘The Government’ was going to take over the tabling of PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang’s Private Member’s Sharia Amendment Bill (known as RUU355) many people had mixed feelings about the matter. If they said Umno was going to table it many would still feel wary because that would mean the rest of Barisan Nasional would not be involved and it would be a private deal between PAS and Umno or between Hadi and Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. Maybe for Islam this would be good. But then this is about politics and in politics you need to tread very carefully because it is not what you do that matters but the perception created by what you do.

Furthermore, ‘The Government’ is not Umno. It is Barisan Nasional — Umno and a dozen other political parties. Barisan Nasional won 47.38% of the votes in the last general election and 59.91% of the seats. Umno, however, won only 29.42% of the votes and 39.64% of the seats. That means Umno is not the majority in ‘The Government’. Umno is just the largest minority. And there is a vast difference between the two.

An even more important point is that the opposition, DAP in particular, has always mocked the non-Umno parties in Barisan Nasional, MCA in particular. DAP says that Umno is a dictator who decides everything and none of the others have any say. Once Umno decides the others have to just follow like running dogs.

Hadi has done his duty, now it is up to the Muslim Members of Parliament

DAP also knows that without the support of Barisan Nasional Sabah and Sarawak, which has 57 or 26% of the 222 parliament seats, there is no way Barisan Nasional can stay in power. Both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Harapan have acknowledged that Sabah and Sarawak are the ‘fixed deposits’ or ‘kingmakers’.

And for that reason Pakatan Harapan has been playing the Christians against the Muslims, a very dangerous game but extremely effective considering that Islam and Christianity have been ‘competitors’ for more than 1,000 years. Today, the Muslims and Christians in Malaysia and all over the world are badly divided and consider one another as enemies. It is only because the Malaysian Christians are such a small minority that bloodshed has not been triggered yet. If not by now there would be slaughter on the streets.

DAP knows that to win Sabah and Sarawak they must first make the Christians hate the Muslims. And DAP was using the RUU355 to achieve this. But now that weapon has been taken away so DAP has to look for another issue to make the Christians and the Muslims fight. And they cannot go back to 1MDB because the government has just announced good news so 1MDB is no longer an effective weapon (READ HERE: 1MDB has fully settled bank loans, short-term debts – MoF).

Najib knows what he is doing while the opposition is still trying to guess what he is up to

If ‘The Government’ had continued with its plan to take over the RUU355 Private Member’s Bill from Hadi and table it as a Government Bill, that would create a few negative perceptions.

First would be that ‘The Government’ means just Umno and does not include the other 12 members of Barisan Nasional. In that case, what DAP has been saying all these years is true. So why should the other 12 parties bother to remain in Barisan Nasional? Better the others all leave Barisan Nasional and let Umno and PAS form a new coalition without the rest.

The second negative perception created would be that Umno is so worried that the non-Malays or non-Muslims will not support Barisan Nasional in the next general election. So Umno is very desperate for the Malay-Muslim votes, which is why it took over the tabling of RUU355 from Hadi. This is Umno’s desperate attempt to woo the Malay-Muslim votes, which it would not get if it does not ‘prove’ it is more Islamic than PAS.

What happens now is that the RUU355 is no longer Umno-PAS versus the rest. And ‘the rest’ here means about 20 or 30 other political parties (from both sides of the political divide), religious groups (Muslim groups included) and civil liberty movements (many with Muslims included), etc. The issue has been ‘simplified’ to Muslims who want the Sharia amendments versus non-Muslims and Muslims who do not want the Sharia amendments.

To Umno, it has done its Islamic duty by agreeing for ‘The Government’ to take over the tabling of the RUU355. However, since ‘The Government’ also comprises of 12 other non-Umno parties, the matter must first be brought to the Barisan Nasional Council for discussion and the 12 have outvoted Umno. Umno now can either tell the other 12 to go to hell and prove DAP right or, in the spirit of consensus, listen to the other 12.

Kit Siang suddenly lost his weapon to divide the Muslims and non-Muslims by playing the race-religion card

Barisan Nasional has already set its ground-rules, which was actually done during the time of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. All parties must unanimously agree to anything that Barisan Nasional does and a simple majority is not good enough. Even if just one of the 13 parties object then Barisan Nasional cannot do it. That is also how the Conference of Rulers make decisions on matters related to Article 153, Islam, the National Language, etc. It is either unanimous by ten Rulers or else no go.

To PAS it has also done its Islamic duty. It has brought the RUU355 to Parliament and it is now out of PAS’s hands. It is now up to the Muslim Members of Parliament to ‘tepuk dada tanya iman’ or vote according to their conscience. If their conscience says oppose the RUU355 then they will oppose it. Finally it all boils down to between you and Allah. It no longer has anything to do with PAS, Umno, Hadi or Najib.

If you think this is what Allah wants then vote accordingly. If you think this is not what Allah wants then vote against it. It is up to each Muslim Member of Parliament to decide. Hadi can only drag the horse to water. Hadi cannot force the horse to drink. That is the long and short of it all. And this also deflects the allegation that Hadi is trying to stay in power with the support of Umno and that Hadi is Umno’s puppet. What now are they going to say about Hadi since they are saying he has been played out or sold out by Najib and Umno?

And when it was first announced that ‘The Government’ was going to take over from Hadi the tabling of the RUU355, the opposition, DAP in particular, mocked and condemned Najib and Umno. Now that they announce ‘The Government’ is not going to take over from Hadi the tabling of the RUU355 after all, the opposition, DAP in particular, also mock and condemn Najib and Umno. I suppose if even God cannot please both the farmers and the fishermen at the same time how can Najib please DAP that sees rain as both good and bad at the same time and can never be made happy?