Former chief: PAS non-Muslim wing supports hudud? Hogwash!
(Malay Mail Online) – The PAS Supporters’ Congress (DHPP) has never supported the Islamist party’s hudud plans in Kelantan despite contrary claims by the wing’s new leadership, said ex-chairman Hu Pang Chow.
Hu said the remarks made by his successor, N. Balasubramaniam, expressing DHPP’s full support for hudud was misleading and a betrayal of its members who are against the controversial Islamic penal code.
“Balasubramaniam has never gone down to the grassroots, he has no idea what DHPP members really feel about hudud.
“I challenge him, go down to each state and poll the DHPP members there, see how many of them actually support hudud,” Hu told Malay Mail Online recently.
“But Bala, I know him, he dare not do that…because he will find that hudud might only get support from some Kelantan DHPP leaders who have state positions and do not want to lose their jobs,” added Hu, who is now the Johor DHPP deputy chairman.
Hu said PAS should continue its successful efforts to reach out to all Malaysians regardless of race or religion, and to focus on issues such as education and the economy instead of “personal matters” like religion.
“There are more urgent agendas to pursue, do that, focus on that,” Hu stressed.
Despite previous objections to the roll out of hudud in Kelantan, the DHPP is now saying it has never opposed the implementation of the controversial Islamic criminal law, claiming hudud would not affect non-Muslims.
The DHPP’s new chairman, Balasubramaniam, said that the wing’s past anti-hudud remarks were made by his predecessor, Hu, and that such views did not reflect the group’s official stand.
When Hu was chairman, the DHPP had outrightly objected to Kelantan’s hudud plans, believing that not all within PAS are agreeable to it.
This resulted in Hu’s removal as DHPP chief back in May last year.
The DHPP, formed back in 2010, was ostensibly created as PAS’s response to its growing influence among the non-Malays.
PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang has resubmitted a notice to table a private member’s bill in Parliament, where Dewan Rakyat proceedings begin today, to amend the Shariah Court (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 in a bid to implement hudud in Kelantan.
