MP SPEAKS The 48-hour silence of the top MCA, Gerakan and MIC leaders who are also cabinet ministers, to the claim by the Umno and BN secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor that the BN has arrived at a consensus regarding PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang’s Private Member’s Bill, is more eloquent than any statement anyone of them could make.

As usual, the top MCA, Gerakan and MIC leaders allow their low-level underlings to cast doubt on Adnan’s claim. But they dare not personally contradict Adnan’s statement and their silence is louder than the protestations by the MCA, Gerakan and MIC underlings.

Before the BN supreme council meeting two Fridays ago, I had said that the BN Supreme Council had degenerated from the BN federal coalition government’s highest decision-making body into a superfluous and even superannuated creature without any bite, role, authority or purpose whatsoever.

What Umno leadership decides is the order of the day, and this is what happened to Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill in the May meeting of Parliament.

Classic example

Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill is in fact a classic example of the degeneration of the role and place of the BN supreme council.

MCA and Gerakan leaders had not dared to even requisition for an emergency meeting of the BN supreme council when Umno ministers unilaterally fast-tracked the PAS president’s Private Member’s Bill in Parliament in May.

This violated the 43-year BN stand and consensus that PAS’ hudud proposal was not appropriate for Malaysia’s plural society, and against the fundamental provisions of the 1957 Merdeka Constitution and 1963 Malaysia Agreement.

Although MCA and Gerakan leaders had promised in the recent Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections that the BN “consensus” will be restored, the top MCA, Gerakan and MIC leaders have disappeared to their respective “holes”.

They dared not clarify or contradict what Adnan meant when the Umno/BN secretary-general claimed that BN had arrived at a consensus regarding Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill, for the Parliament meeting starting on Oct. 17.

Voices of opposition to Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill have been raised from BN ministers and MPs from Sabah and Sarawak.

It is undoubtedly a great letdown that the top MCA, Gerakan and MIC leaders are not as forthright and principled like the Sabah and Sarawak ministers, like Anifah Musa and Nancy Shukri, who had publicly declared their opposition to Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill.

The mystery is how Adnan can claim that there is a BN consensus on Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill, if MCA, Gerakan and MIC leaders had spoken up to the BN supreme council to declare their opposition?

LIM KIT SIANG is DAP’s Gelang Patah MP.