TTF: There is something everyone seems to be missing (see news item below).
When the DAP severed ties with PAS, it did so because Dato’ Seri Abdul Hadi Awang refused to endorse Datin Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as Pakatan Rakyat’s choice for the post of Selangor Menteri Besar. The PAS president refused to go against the ruler of Selangor who made it clear that he didn’t favour the PKR president.
Over the years that followed, Lim Kit Siang insisted that the reason Pakatan could not work with PAS had something to do with the RUU 355. According to him, Hadi’s persistence in wanting to expand the jurisdiction of the Syariah Courts was not in line with the coalition’s collective mission and agenda.
So the impression given was that Pakatan favoured a secular nation and was against the dual system of law. Well and fair. But in 2001, Mahathir told a Gerakan delegates’ conference that Malaysia was an Islamic nation. When asked by reporters outside the hall, he added that the country wasn’t just Islamic, but a fundamentalist one at that.
The last I checked, a fundamentalist Islamic nation would definitely support the broadening of the Syariah Courts’ jurisdiction in line with the teachings of Islam. So tell me, does Mahathir support the RUU 355?
Go ahead, try asking him. See what he has to say. If he says yes, he will make Lim Kit Siang look like an oaf for severing ties with PAS. If he says no, it will be established that both PPBM and Amanah – the only Muslim centric parties in the coalition – are anti-Islam.
Either way, the Malays aren’t gonna be too happy.
PETALING JAYA: Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) announcement of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as their prime minister candidate can affect Malaysia’s economy and scare off investors, an Umno supreme council member claimed today.
Kuala Selangor MP Datuk Seri Irmohizam Ibrahim said investors would be worried and doubtful of former prime minister Dr Mahathir’s leadership, pointing out that the citizens of Zimbabwe, on the other hand, had revolted against the three-decade authoritarian rule of former president Robert Mugabe.
“In my opinion Tun Mahathir would only use his position as a stepping stone to prepare his son Datuk Seri Mukhriz as PM, as history has shown he fired his deputies for power when he was PM.
“Would history repeat itself now that he is in PH?” he said in a statement today.
Irmohizam said PH’s move has triggered unsatisfactory feelings among 1998 reformists within the coalition, who had protested Dr Mahathir’s sacking of deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim that year.
“The principles of PKR’s struggle have merely confused the people and disappointed their supporters,” he said.
Source: The Malay Mail Online
