Soi Lek is doing to the Chinese what Utusan does with Malays, says Kit Siang
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 20 — The MCA president is trying to scare Chinese voters by alleging that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) will implement hudud laws if the opposition pact wins the coming general election, the DAP’s Lim Kit Siang said.
Likening the actions of the Chinese-based party’s leader to Umno-controlled daily Utusan Malaysia, Lim said Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek was practising a politics of “desperation, fear and irresponsibility” to gain support from the Chinese community.
“The MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek is... seeking to frighten Chinese voters with lies and falsehoods in the same manner Utusan has been trying in the past three years to scare Malay voters with its daily staple of lies and falsehoods,” Lim (picture) said in Ipoh last night.
He said Dr Chua’s allegation that PR would attempt to amend the Federal Constitution to implement hudud was a “downright lie and utter rubbish”, saying that it shows an “utter contempt for figures, facts and the truth.”
Dr Chua had claimed that “judging from the 222 MPs, of whom most were Muslims, PAS could easily obtain the two-thirds majority to implement its version of hudud”, Lim said.
PAS has been pushing for hudud laws despite its ally DAP’s opposition to the Islamic penal code.
Kelantan and Terengganu have passed hudud as laws, but have yet to be enforced because they go against the Federal Constitution.
The country’s supreme law can only be amended by a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which would be 148 of the total 222 MPs.
But Lim said that the total number of Muslim MPs in Parliament does not even hit the two-thirds majority needed for any amendment to allow for hudud to be implemented.
“If we consider only the Muslim MPs in Peninsular Malaysia, they only constitute 107 MPs, less than 50 per cent of the total number of MPs in Malaysia, far short of the two-thirds or 66.7 per cent required for any constitutional amendment.”
He said that even by adding Sabah and Sarawak, there would only be 130 Muslim MPs.
“Even if we take the number of Muslim-majority versus non-Muslim-majority seats, there are only 136 Muslim-majority seats in the whole country (61 per cent), still 12 short of a two-thirds majority of 148,” said Lim, who is also the DAP parliamentary leader.
He said the figures debunks Dr Chua’s “lie” of Muslim MPs across the political divide uniting to amend the constitution in favour of hudud if PR takes power.
Lim said that if PR wins the coming elections, “the implementation of hudud will not be part of the Pakatan Rakyat federal government policy... unless all the three PR parties can reach a consensus on it.”
He pointed out that PR’s leadership had “repeatedly emphasised that the implementation of hudud is not part of the PR common policy framework” and that “there must be consensus among the three PR component parties before there could be any change in any agreed PR policy.”
Lim repeated that the DAP’s consistent stand was that “an Islamic state and hudud laws are inappropriate and unsuitable for Malaysia as a plural society.”
The Ipoh Timor MP said the DAP did not hide its principles and beliefs, saying that both the party and PAS know each other’s different stand.
The ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, of which the MCA is a component party, has tried to drive a wedge between PAS and the DAP over the hudud issue.
