Marriage for votes: Sanusi 'saves' PAS women's chief from 'poisoned question'

Press personnel covering PAS’ muktamar in Temerloh, Pahang today tried to get its women’s wing’s view on a suggestion for the party's youth leaders to marry non-Malays to gain their votes.

However, PAS election director Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor thwarted the move, and told PAS women’s chief Nuridah Mohd Salleh not to entertain such queries he jestingly regarded as “poison”.

“Why are you guys focusing on this issue about (cross-cultural) marriage? There are many other issues in this world.

“You (Nuridah) don’t have to entertain their questions.

“They are just trying to ‘poison’ us, trying to provoke us to prolong yesterday’s issue,” he said.

Sanusi’s remarks caused journalists and other PAS leaders in the press conference room to burst into laughter.

‘Can be explored’

Earlier, the Kedah menteri besar when asked to comment on the matter said such a suggestion is not wrong and can be “explored”.

However, he also noted that the suggestion by a PAS delegate was only an attempt to fire up their muktamar session yesterday.

“It can be one of the ways (towards gaining more votes). It shouldn’t be a problem.

“This suggestion can be explored. But it can only be a cross-cultural marriage, not an inter-religious one.

“(But) this suggestion was only to ‘bagi riuh’ (hype up the atmosphere),” he said.

Reasonable criticisms

However, Sanusi also appeared to agree with criticisms against the idea, which some had regarded as tarnishing the sanctity of marriage for political purposes.

He said the criticisms were reasonable because Muslims should commit whatever they do, including marriage, because of Allah.

“Marrying people for votes ‘tak sah’ (invalid),” he added.

Yesterday, Selangor PAS Youth secretary Aubidullah Fahim Ibrahim told delegates at the PAS Youth muktamar that the wing’s leaders should take wives from different races and cultures to get non-Malay voters for the party.

“We want to suggest that leaders of this youth wing commit cross-ethnic or cross-cultural marriage.

“The reason is that when we marry someone from another ethnicity or culture, we will not win only one more vote, but insyaAllah, we will be able to get 10 or even hundreds of votes from the non-Malays or non-Muslims,” said Aubidullah.

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