Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) will break ranks with BN should the coalition support the hudud bill which PAS intends to table in Parliament.

 

“Our party’s stand is that we will oppose it,” said PRS President James Masing when asked to comment on a statement made by PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang that he would personally table its hudud bill in the current sitting in Parliament.

 

Kelantan’s state assembly unanimously passed the Shariah Criminal Code 11 1993 (Amendment 2015) or hudud bill last week.

 

“Our six members of Parliament will not support the bill,” said Masing, a senior minister in the state cabinet.

 

He held that as far as Kelantan was concerned, it was up to the state to implement hudud.

 

“But if they are going to table it in Parliament then we have problems,” he said, pointing out that hudud was not in line with Article 5 of the Federal Constitution.

 

“It is ultra vires, bearing in mind that this country is multi-racial and multi-religious. You don’t force people to believe what you believe,” he said.

 

However he stressed he was speaking for PRS, saying that he could not speak for others in the coalition like Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) or the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP).

 

PRS, a rural-based party, whose membership comprises more than 90 percent Christian Dayaks, is the second in the state to oppose the implementation of hudud in the country, after Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP).

 

The United People’s Party (UPP), a BN-friendly party, has also come out against hudud.

 

“Our stand is very strong on this. We are against its implementation,” its president Wong Soon Koh ( left ), who is also the local government and community development minister, said in Sibu yesterday.

 

Opposition Sarawak DAP which had condemned the passing of hudud law in Kelantan has threatened to sever ties with PAS in the state Pakatan.

It has accused PAS of backstabbing the coalition.