Reference is made to your report Keadilan's final stand: 'No' to hudud

The stand is not a final 'no'. It is instead a 'no' , a 'maybe no' and a 'yes' — all at the same time!

Keadilan's stand is comprised of three parts:

The first part is a 'no' when Keadilan party president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said, "We stress that our main goal is to establish a good, open government by enacting laws which are just, equal, democratic and transparent," and "We acknowledge that laws must be based on the Federal Constitution and the 1957 social contract."

The second part is a qualified 'maybe no' when Wan Azizah stressed that "no Muslim can reject the syariah laws as it is an obligation under Islam". [One may ask whether this means Muslims within Keadilan could support PAS's hudud law in Terengganu whilst its non-Muslim members may reject it, with the position of the party itself left still open?]

The third part becomes a 'yes' when she said, "the party respected the right of the Terengganu and Kelantan state governments to implement the hudud laws as they were 'democratically elected'".

The problem about Keadilan's stand is that its three parts contradict each other.

For example: how could Keadilan respect the right of the Terengganu and Kelantan state governments to implement the hudud laws as they were "democratically elected" (in the third part of its stand) when these very hudud laws contravene the Federal Constitution and the 1957 social contract, which Keadilan acknowledged that laws must be based upon (in the first part of its stand)?

Wan Azizah then expressed the hope that "With this stand, Keadilan hopes that all parties will not politicise or turn this issue into a polemic exercise."

High hopes! By having such an ambiguous stand that obfuscates more than it clarifies, Keadilan attempts to appease everybody but, in the end, possibly nobody.

It only confirms the perception that Keadilan is more concerned with saying different things to cater for different audiences in the interest of popularity than principle.

Supreme council member Dr Lim Boon Chye's statement that the party's stand considered the "sensitivities of all races" is a poor justification for such ambivalence. Although different races have different sensitivities, is it a good excuse to say different contradictory things to different races? Has Keadilan a position at all grounded at least on its founding principles of social justice and equality, let alone truth?

Being incapable of expressing a clear stand grounded on principle, Keadilan again proves that it is more driven by opportunism of what is expedient to say for the moment than the consistency of principle for all time.

This is in sharp contrast with PRM president Dr Syed Husin Ali's unequivocal stand at its recent congress in Kuala Lumpur when he said that his party (PRM) rejected a theocratic state or that of the DAP in rejecting both PAS' Islamic state and implementation of hudud laws in Terengganu.