COMMENT To proceed or not to proceed?

 

That seems to be is the Hamlet-like question posed to the Kelantan wing of PAS.

 

On Dec 29 they were scheduled to table amendments to a 1993 Syariah enactment, a law the state legislature passed that should have enabled the imposition of the Islamic penal code in Kelantan 20 years ago.

 

That law was frozen for want of federal constitutional warrants for its implementation.

 

Those warrants are deemed obtainable if, consequent to the contemplated Dec 29 passage of amendments to the 1993 Syariah enactment, a private member’s bill enabling it is tabled at Parliament's next sitting in March.

 

Looking at the size of the Muslim component of the federal legislature's 222 members and that section's concern for its Islamic rectitude, PAS was confident of the bill's passage.

 

All the while that this move of theirs was being planned, its secular partners in Pakatan Rakyat, of which PAS has been an ambiguous member at best, retched and raged at the thought.

 

The avowedly secular DAP could be said to have been well nigh apoplectic about the whole thing.

 

But PAS, its Kelantan wing in particular, was adamant on going ahead with a move that is easily the most momentous in the nation's history and the most radical in its implications for the polity.

 

Devastating floods

Then nature took a hand.

    

Devastating floods in Kelantan and neighbouring states put paid to Kelantan PAS’s plan to pass the amendments to the 1993 Syariah law.

 

Only when the flood situation grew ominous by the weekend of Dec 27-28 did the PAS administration condescend to postponing the sitting scheduled for the 29th.

 

Alas, the urgency to implement “God's law” had to yield to the necessity of grappling with the situation posed by nature's wrath.

 

There was some irony in the situation.

 

Prior pleas from Pakatan partners DAP and PKR to PAS to prioritise the issues of good governance, inclusive of respect for the environment, over the necessity of implementing a penal code that smacks of medievalism, failed to make a dent on the Islamic party, specifically its Kelantan wing. 

 

One of the move's staunchest supporters, Nik Abduh Nik Aziz( right ), their MP for Pasir Mas, was certain that initial signs of the deluge that was to inundate large parts of the state were telltale evidence of God's wrath on account of supposed tardiness in enforcing His laws.

 

In the event, the move to have the amendments passed and settled on Dec 29 could not stay nature's hand; much of the state, including the area on which the state legislative body is located, was flooded.

 

The sitting could not be held and the amendments could not be tabled.

 

Moral corruption

Speculation that the severity of the floods was traceable to excessive logging – something that could not have taken place without negligence by the state's political overseers - inevitably raised questions about what contributes more to humankind's woe - the less tangible, if more devastating, consequences of moral corruption of those invested with power or the depraved conduct of individuals for which the Islamic penal code is recommended as deterrent.

 

This speculation may be futile, but if legislators like Nik Abduh regard God as a celestial party chairperson, then signals from that authority that do not tally with interpretations such as the Pasir Mas MP's, can be viewed differently, to wit, the divinities were not in favor of hudud law; that's why the floods came and postponed the sitting of the state legislature.

 

Doubtless, the more worldly minded would dispense with this way of looking at things and take substantive facts on the ground for what they import.

 

A New Year message from Gua Musang MP and Umno independent thinker, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, lamented the grim economic and social scenarios prevailing in the country and urged the reassertion of the old verities - good and competent governance, extirpation of corruption, and constitutionalism - as the way out of the morass.

 

Razaleigh felt compelled to issue the message, alarmed as he is by the steady drift of the country to the precipice.

 

To the faction of PAS that is behind the move to introduce the Islamic penal code in Kelantan, Razaleigh is a credible leader.

 

If Pakatan had gained Putrajaya in the 13th general election in May 2013, he was this faction's candidate for prime minister, a surreptitious choice but something signal members of the faction did not deny as true when the matter was disclosed a year after the polls.

 

Thus what Razaleigh said about the need to uphold the federal constitution in his 2015 message must be regarded as admonishing PAS to reconsider their plan to introduce hudud law in Kelantan.

 

The Islamic penal code and the constitution are radically incompatible; you cannot have the one with the other.  

 

Razaleigh has dropped a hint to PAS that they not proceed with their plan, now that the flood waters have receded and the maneuver can be placed back on course.

 

Would PAS be amenable to hints from both nature and their own preferences?

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.