Pakatan buries hudud idea

PETALING JAYA: Pakatan Rakyat leaders today said they would not implement hudud in the country should they take over Putrajaya in the next general election.

“We have solved this issue last year, and we are sticking to the common policy included in the Buku Jingga,” PAS secretary-general Mustafa Ali said at a press conference here.

Hudud, he said, was not included in the Buku Jingga or “Orange Book”, which is a document of Pakatan’s policies known as the Common Policy Framework.

“In the case of Kelantan, their enactment existed before Pakatan Rakyat did. Even then, they are setting up a committee to oversee its implementation,” Mustafa said after attending Pakatan’s secretariat meeting at PKR’s headquarters.

“On the other hand, there are no such plans to implement Hudud in Kedah,” he pointed out.

DAP chairman Karpal Singh had earlier said that any attempt by PAS to espouse hudud in the country would reflect poorly on the decisions made by the last PAS Muktamar – shifting its agenda for an Islamic state to a more inclusive “welfare state”.

Terengganu PAS Youth chief Mohd Nor Hamzah had, in turn, called for the senior politician’s retirement, claiming that the latter’s “outdated views” had become a liability to Pakatan Rakyat.

The ruling coalition played this up and said Pakatan’s split on hudud was irreconcilable and warned the electorate against voting in a pact that would rather sweep its problems under the carpet than solve it.

BN using Hudud to frighten the Chinese

But DAP Youth leader Anthony Loke accused the MCA and Barisan Nasional of using hudud as a scare tactic to frighten the Chinese community from voting for the opposition coalition.

“Once the general election nears, BN will paint DAP in a bad light, which will, by extension, affect PAS and PKR as well,” he told reporters.

“MCA is using hudud to frighten the Chinese. They are using their old strategy and scripts again,” he said.

MCA had previously challenged the Chinese-dominated DAP to withdraw from Pakatan over the hudud issue, adding that DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng was attempting to mislead the Chinese community and the non-Muslims.

But Loke said that Pakatan was well aware of BN’s “attacks” towards the coalition, and promised that they would come up with their own strategy to counter the ruling coalition’s “script”.

“We will not be distracted and Pakatan will continue to focus on our main agenda and issues,” he said.