PAS Youth has expressed its displeasure over 12 DAP assemblypersons in Sarawak who failed to wear the proper state assembly attire at its sitting yesterday.

“This does not represent the comradeship which is prevalent in the constitution to respect each other. Although this happened in Sarawak, I regret that this would bring about a negative perception, especially by the Malays, on Pakatan Rakyat.

NONE “We would like to urge the Pakatan leadership council to advise these assemblypersons so that this does not happen again,” said PAS Youth vice-chief Raja Ahmad Al Hiss ( right ) in a statement today.

Berita Harian on its front page showed Wong Ho Leng leading the 11 other DAP assemblypersons who were not wearing the official attire which is said to represent Islam. The Umno-owned paper claimed the DAP was not respecting the Sarawak society’s culture where three PKR assemblypersons and an Independent assemblyperson were seen wearing the official attire.

Meanwhile, Wong was quoted in the New Straits Times as saying that the DAP assemblypersons had agreed to wear dark suits rather than the state assembly attire as the party did not want to waste the taxpayers’ money as a full ceremonial garment, including a songkok, would cost between RM2,000 and RM4,000.

“The speaker has ruled that it is not necessary to wear the official uniform as long as we wear dark official suits. Since it is not the rule of the day, all 12 of us will come in dark suits as we have done all this while,” Wong, who is also the Bukit Assek assemblyperson, was quoted as saying by the English daily.

‘It’s a non-issue’

The daily also quoted PKR’s newly-elected Padungan assemblyperson See Chee How as saying they were given a choice on whether or not to wear the state assembly attire.

“It was thus a non-issue. PKR assemblypersons chose to wear it because the attire was just a state assembly costume and the songkok is just a headpiece, with no religious connotation,” See was quoted to have said.

Raja Ahmad said PAS views the failure of the 12 DAP assemblypersons to wear the ceremonial garb as Umno and BN’s failure to educate the people, especially non-Muslims, to understand and respect the Malay and Islamic culture here.

“Non-Muslims do not understand the real Islam and there are many things in Islam which are being misconceived by the non-Muslims,” he said.

“Umno itself had prevented the implementation of Islamic laws and the Malay nationalist party is ‘not friendly’ to Islamic laws, resulting in non-Muslims being afraid and failing to understand the purpose of the implementation. Similarly, this garb and songkok issue is being seen as religious attire,” he said.