COMMENT After employing rhetorical pressure to persuade its Pakatan Rakyat coalition partner, PAS, to desist from passing the hudud bill in Kelantan, DAP is left with only one choice now that the Islamic party has remained impervious to its pleadings.

And that choice will register more effectively if effected with as little recrimination as possible.

By badmouthing PAS, the DAP would only lend credence to the canard it is anti-Islam.

It should resist the temptation by not working up lather on ‘PAS’ betrayal’ of Pakatan's common policy framework which has nary a word on hudud.

After what happened in Kelantan, the DAP’s reaction should be to quit Pakatan pronto.

It should not bother to ask Pakatan to expel PAS.

That course is likely to enjoy as much success as the DAP’s other coalition partner, PKR, experienced when it instructed its sole representative in the Kelantan state assembly to abstain from the debate on the hudud bill.

Not only did that rep not abstain, he is not sure how his presumably ambivalent signals were read as assenting to the hudud bill.

The bill was passed unanimously, with Umno in full support and PKR, wittingly or unwittingly, in tandem.

Admittedly, in the face of the totalitarianism that was on parade in the Kelantan state assembly, it would have been difficult for PKR to offer dissent.

If ambivalence on hudud is the PKR choice, clarity in being against hudud must be the DAP preference, as befits the secularism of its liberal democratic convictions.

And that’s best conveyed by quitting Pakatan - and quickly, too.

The DAP rightly drew red lines against the threat of PAS’ unapologetic violation of Pakatan’s common policy framework (CPF).

PAS’ hudud venture represents a radical departure from CPF tenets.

From the populism of being ‘PAS for all’, the Islamic party has retrogressed to the sectarianism inherent in hudud.

It justifies this about-turn by saying that its hudud agenda preexisted its acquiescence to Pakatan’s common policy framework which does not mention hudud.

Needless to say, no lasting cooperation is possible with people to whom their word - especially on matters of huge import - is not their bond.

And PAS is no ordinary party - it’s a religious one, which makes its repudiation of critical obligations under Pakatan’s common policy framework no small matter.

Flagrant nose-thumbing

In the teeth of such flagrant nose-thumbing by PAS, DAP cannot be equivocal in its reaction.

Its rhetoric of dissuasion of PAS from hudud was trenchant; now its reaction of disassociation from PAS must be a version of Theodore Roosevelt's counsel: “Talk softly but carry a big stick.”

This is necessary to demonstrate to the 52 percent of voters who chose the coalition at the last general election that solemn pledges made in Pakatan’s manifesto are not to be trifled with.

What would quitting Pakatan do to the hopes of a change in government for  those who voted for it?

Of course, it would make those hopes a lot more difficult to attain, but right now the overriding concern is the inviolability of pledges given before the vote and how breaking them ought to merit ostracism.

By its decision for hudud in Kelantan, PAS has invited the opprobrium of voters elsewhere in the country who believed its word and voted their belief.

By insisting on hudud in Kelantan, PAS is paving the way for the establishment of political cantons in Malaysia where legislators can elect to have different juridical systems to the one mandated by the federal constitution.

This is a recipe for the political fragmentation and balkanisation of the polity.

DAP’s quitting of Pakatan will have implications for its presence in the PKR-led Pakatan government in Selangor.

A tacit but unequivocal signal to PKR that it is willing to withdraw from the ruling coalition if something is not done to tell PAS that its breach of CPF tenets in Kelantan is impugnable is imperative.

But the DAP should not expend too much time arguing the point.

The public, from January last year over the menteri besar crisis in Selangor, has had enough of Pakatan’s intramural wrangles.

Bores are insufferable, in politics as in much else that counts for public  entertainment.

So DAP must talk softly but carry a big stick.

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.