COMMENT Most of us have half-expected that Hadi Awang’s private member’s bill will not be tabled in the current parliamentary session.

Despite talk that Umno would be throwing its support behind PAS in order for it to proceed with the hudud laws in the state of Kelantan, it appears to me that this is more like a political ploy to split Pakatan Rakyat - at least, for the moment - than Umno viewing implementation of hudud with great urgency the way PAS treats the subject.

It is a fact that for the Muslims, hudud is nothing but divine law, although we are told by some Islamic scholars that the word ‘hudud’ appears not more than 10 times in the Quran.

For PAS, its plan to implement hudud laws in Kelantan is partly to fulfil its promises to the voters in the state, besides putting in place the divine law. Cruel as the penalties may seem, PAS leaders claim that once hudud is implemented, it will reduce the crime rate in the state.

Why then, despite all the brouhaha over the hudud laws in Kelantan, is there still a lack of urgency in tabling the private member’s bill in Parliament?

Question of urgency and political will

The reason is simple. The PAS president appears to have been taken for a ride. Either way, I suspect that Hadi has been checkmated.

Now, turning back to Pakatan, PAS would no longer be welcomed with open arms by the DAP in the same way that the DAP had willingly worked with the late PAS spiritual leader Tok Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat.

And turning to Umno, there is no way that the party will be accepted as Umno’s equal. Unity government or otherwise, Umno would want to secure as many seats as it possibly can during a general election.

After all the ideals of having a unity government, the political reality has to take over. For argument’s sake, it is unlikely that Umno would concede its seats to PAS, for fear that when PAS breaks away from the unity government, Umno would be left with fewer seats to lead the coalition.

PAS said that Umno is serious about implementing hudud, but was hudud even being discussed at the cabinet level? According to two cabinet ministers, the issue was not even raised in the cabinet, despite MCA ministers crowing about it, telling the Chinese community that they had objected against the hudud during the last cabinet meeting.

When both Tourism Minister Mohamad Nazri Abdul Aziz ( left ) and Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin revealed that the cabinet never discussed hudud, it must have left MCA president Liow Tiong Lai red-faced, because it is either Nazri and Khairy, or Liow, that was not telling the truth.

Meanwhile, Najib Abdul Razak remains silent about whether he supports hudud or not. There are already a lot of tell-tale signs that Hadi has now been stalemated, despite all the promises that he would get support from other Umno lawmakers.

Backfired

Yesterday, when a Selangor MCA delegation sent a letter demanding that DAP’s Tony Pua sever all ties with PAS in Selangor, they were given a smack in the face - this time, by one smart Selangor DAP committee member who is none other than Edry Faizal Eddy Yusof.

The delegates were made to look ‘stupid’ when they had to pose in front of press photographers holding up the mirror that a witty Edry ( right in photo ) had presented to them.

“Please stare at yourself in the mirror before making demands from us,” Edry was quoted as saying. “MCA should resolve its problems with Umno on hudud first. This mirror, it is cheap, so it’s not important. What is important is that they (Selangor MCA) are able to look at themselves.”

This, of course, drew laughter from anyone reading the news, but the truth is that MCA did not even stop Umno in Kelantan from supporting the amendments to the Syariah enactment.

Even former MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek had lambasted at his own party for merely finger-pointing at DAP without doing enough to stop Kelantan Umno from supporting the hudud laws in the state.

Within the next 24 hours after the incident, it will be interesting to see how Selangor MCA will respond to Edry’s antics, besides trying to further play up the hudud issue, presumably by calling the DAP hypocrites for not divorcing from Selangor PAS.

Will it be a ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’, to see who is the fairest of all? MCA has yet to tell us if they had been fair to Selangor DAP by demanding it to sever all ties with Selangor PAS, since it was the people who had voted in both DAP and PAS assemblypersons in Selangor.

Meanwhile, until Najib makes his decision known, there will be more crossfire between parties from extreme ends of the political pendulum. And it is unlikely that he will make an announcement until Pakatan is torn apart.

Tomorrow: Cracks within Pakatan a necessity

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.