DAP opposes PAS not only because of hudud, but because it does not want the Islamic party to lead the opposition coalition, PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man is reported as saying.

“Why is DAP these days always attacking us? It’s because (PKR de facto leader) Anwar Ibrahim (is in jail).

“(It is because) they cannot accept PAS becoming the leader (of the opposition coalition). That is why I say there is another reason (for opposing PAS).

“DAP doesn’t agree with PAS bringing the hudud matter to Parliament. We want to implement hudud, and in Kelantan we have won (the elections) for decades.

“If there is a chance to do, we have to do it. We bring it (to Parliament) as a duty,” Sinar Harian today reported Tuan Ibrahim as saying .

The primary reason for the crisis within the former opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat, he said, was PKR’s ‘Kajang Move’ that caused DAP to go against PAS.

“We said there was no need to change (the then Selangor menteri besar) Khalid Ibrahim. But suddenly, without discussion, they (PKR) wanted to change.

“As is known, PAS did not agree to this and it caused friction to the point DAP attacked PAS,” Tuan Ibrahim said.

‘Defend Nik Aziz’s legacy’

DAP had supported PKR’s decision to change the Selangor MB via the Kajang by-election, which would have placed Anwar in the state assembly and paved the way for him to assume the post.

In the months that followed Anwar’s incarceration and disqualification from elections, and his wife Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail’s subsequent win in Kajang in his place, PAS worked to foil Wan Azizah’s ascension to the menteri besar post by presenting its own candidates to the Selangor sultan and ordering its state assembypersons not to support Wan Azizah.

After the Selangor menteri besar debacle, DAP and PAS came to blows over the insistence of PAS on tabling a bill in Parliament to allow for hudud to be implemented in Kelantan.

Acrimony between the two parties eventually led to the break-up of the coalition last year.

On another matter, Tuan Ibrahim also commented on the plans of the PAS breakaway party, Parti Amanah Negara, to contest in Kelantan in the next general election, saying the PAS government should be preserved to honour the name of the party’s late spiritual leader Nik Aziz Nik Mat.

“If we love the state that has been led by the (late) Tok Guru, we have to defend his legacy.

“If they attack Kelantan and (we) lose Kelantan, then Tok Guru’s legacy is lost,” Sinar Harian reported Tuan Ibrahim as saying.