DAP had always been consistent in opposing hudud whereas Umno had been flip-flopping over the issue, said DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng in response to MCA’s urging for his party to join the opposition to the hudud joint technical committee.

 

He said Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak had said on Sept 25, 2011 that BN will not enforce hudud law because its implementation needs to take account of reality, but his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin mooted the joint committee with the PAS-led Kelantan government last month.

 

“MCA and Gerakan must accept the reality that it was Umno that instigated PAS to implement hudud in Kelantan,” he said in a statement today, decrying it as a move to deceive voters in the general election two years later.

 

In contrast, he said PAS had always been supporting hudud, even though it admits it was not part Pakatan Rakyat’s common policy framework nor the coalition’s 2013 election manifesto.

 

Lim was responding to MCA publicity chief Chai Kim Sen’s statement yesterday challenging DAP to join MCA in opposing the technical committee.

 

The Penang chief minister also denied Chai’s claim that Lim merely asserted that Penang won’t implement hudud, saying that he had also challenged other states to follow suit with his announcement.

 

“DAP regrets the lies by MCA in claiming that DAP opposes implementing hudud only in Penang but not in Malaysia,” he said, while stressing that DAP is not opposing Islam but “an unconstitutional act”.

 

He added that more pressure should be placed on Umno to abandon hudud’s implementation, because it had suggested the technical committee and also forms the largest voting bloc in parliament, with 88 parliamentarians.

 

Previously, PAS had announced that it would attempt to table a Private Member’s Bill in Parliament during the June sitting that would enable Kelantan to implement its Syariah Criminal Code Enactment II.

 

However, that plan has been scrapped after the joint technical committee between the federal government and the Kelantan government was formed, in order to give it space to make recommendations on hudud’s implementation.