AMANAH president Datuk Seri Mohamad Sabu has made good on his promise to expose PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang’s lies.
Mohamad, also known as Mat Sabu, revealed that the Islamist party had severed its ties with DAP in the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat (PR) platform not because the latter had rejected hudud but because PAS had wanted to form a “unity government” with UMNO.
“The real reason for the move was due to PAS’s plan to ally itself instead with UMNO in order to form a unity government,” Mohamad said at a ceramah at Simpang Jeram, Johor, last night (Aug 28), adding the matter was decided during its muktamar, or annual congress in 2013.
“After the 13th General Election (GE13), there were talks about forming a unity government with UMNO. However, with no prior notification or even discussions, PAS suddenly announced severing its relationship with DAP.
“This is not a hudud problem, this is something else. PAS really wanted to be with UMNO, and due to the political development then, they (PAS and UMNO) ended up forming Muafakat Nasional (MN),” Mohamad said.
Mohamad, who is also Kota raja MP, told the PAS leadership to stop spreading the narrative that the party stopped working with DAP before the 14th General Election (GE14) because the latter had opposed the idea of ‘Negara Islam’ (Islamic state) and the hudud agenda.
“This is something Hadi did not mention. DAP asked that the notion ‘Negara Islam’ not be used. And PAS agreed to replace ‘Negara Islam’ with ‘Negara Berkebajikan’ (welfare state).
“PAS was willing to forgo the ‘Negara Islam’ notion and replace it. Did any PAS leaders mention this? Why are they hiding this fact?”
The Agriculture and Food Security minister also said PR had decided unanimously from the beginning to reject the implementation of hudud.
“PR leaders gathered for a special meeting at the PAS headquarters in Jalan Raja Laut, Kuala Lumpur, which was also attended by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the late Datuk Seri Karpal Singh, and Anthony Loke.
“Karpal was adamant then that there would be no hudud, as it was against the Federal Constitution, and finally, an ‘agree to disagree’ conclusion was made.
“The final decision was to agree to disagree, meaning that we agree on things we can, such as replacing the Internal Security Act (ISA), good governance and fighting corruption, as well as upholding the Federal Constitution.
“We disagreed about hudud laws. After the meeting, we continued our partnership in the 2013 election on the basis that we ‘agree to disagree’,” he said.
PR was founded in 2008 and dissolved in 2015 after PAS decided to sever its ties with DAP after steadily deteriorating relations between DAP leaders and Hadi.
On Saturday (Aug 26), Hadi claimed that it was DAP’s alleged refusal to accept hudud law that had motivated PAS to initiate attempts to change the government during Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) first stint in federal power after the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2018.
In Hadi’s statement, he had also claimed that a few members and former party leaders had left PAS and established Amanah as they were afraid of losing an election, and had gone on to describe those who left PAS to join Amanah as being “faint-hearted” for leaving the party’s struggles. – Aug 29, 2023
Main pic credit: Facebook/Mohamad Sabu
