Despite hearing PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang out today, a Chinese federation will continue its campaign against his proposed amendment to Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965, also known as Act 355.

The Federation of Hokkien Associations Malaysia will continue gathering signatures to reject the proposed amendment, said its president, Khoo Chai Kaa.

He admitted he did not quite understand Hadi's speech, but remained steadfast regarding the federation's plan against the amendments to Act 355.

“The Bill concerns the people of Malaysia. We are a big family, everybody will be affected by this act. This is a public issue, we have the right to give our opinion,” he told reporters.

This was after Hadi had paid a courtesy call to the Hokkien Associations this morning, to explain his proposed amendment to Act 355, with the intention to pave the way for hudud implementation.

This is Hadi's first time to have such a dialogue with Chinese associations.

During the dialogue, Hadi reiterated the proposed amendment only affected Muslims, and did not pave way for hudud being the law of the land.

“We have 222 MPs, but there are only 135 Muslim MPs. We don't have the two-thirds majority to amend the constitution to implement hudud for all. What we want to do is to uphold the syariah court.

“This is not about hudud, qisas or takzir. We just want the syariah court to be empowered to punish Muslims as the court is the highest in the eyes of Muslims.”

However, Khoo viewed that the amendment may affect the rights of non-Muslim and Muslims.

“After very careful discussion and analysis among the leaders of non-Muslim communities, in particular the leaders of the Malaysian Chinese communities' on the proposed bill, we are of opinion that there is a real danger in its wide and open-ended terms of power, short of the death penalty ( given to the syariah court).

“The general scope of Hadi's Bill may contravene our Federal Constitution with far reaching and undesirable implications.”

Attended by 50 people, the dialogue lasted one hour without a question and answer session.

Queried on this, Khoo said both PAS and Hokkien Associations were in consensus on this.

“This is the understanding. It was a courtesy visit. We didn't want to be caught up in other issues. This is part of control and security,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hadi said he will table the amendment again in the next parliament sitting.

“Yes. Yes,” he spoke curtly when asked whether he will retable the amendment.

However, he refused to take other questions before leaving.