Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) has put the blame of hudud squarely on the DAP and wants it to apologise for failing to stop PAS from enacting the law.

Its president Sim Kui Hian said that for too long, DAP had been misleading the voters - especially the Chinese community - into believing that it could stop PAS from implementing the Islamic penal code.

“DAP must apologise to the people for misleading them and explain what the party is going to do after Kelantan has embraced theocracy,” Sim said in a statement yesterday in response to the passing of the hudud amendment bill in Kelantan.

He challenged DAP to sever its alliance with PAS which he said was done for political mileage, while sacrificing people’s  rights.

“DAP has failed to stop PAS, and this means if one day Pakatan Rakyat were to take over the government, the secular nature of Malaysia will be threatened because both DAP and PKR are powerless in checking PAS,” he added.

Sim said that all these showed that PR was just an opportunistic coalition where its component parties – DAP and PKR – were too weak to fight or defend the rights of the people.

The senator also called the passing of hudud in Kelantan “a sad day for a multi-cultural, multi-religious and moderate nation called Malaysia”.

He said the implementation of hudud “will not only affect Muslims, but also the lifestyle of non-Muslims.

“Rather than moving forward, we will be moving backward to become a closed and extreme society,” Sim said.

He vowed that SUPP “will go (all) out to maintain a secular Malaysia.”

He said that PAS’ choice of making Kelantan a theocratic state to achieve its political aim was suicidal as the implications of the hudud law in the country were far more devastating as it would slowly erode its multiracial, multicultural and multireligious nature.