By Shannon Teoh
The Malaysian Insider
Sep 27, 2011
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 27 — The DAP accused The Star today of falsely reporting that Lim Guan Eng had threatened to pull the party out of Pakatan Rakyat (PR) if hudud became part of the pact’s joint policy.
Zairil Khir Johari, Lim’s political secretary, wrote in an open letter to the English daily that the party secretary-general had merely promised that “the entire central executive committee (CEC) would resign to take full responsibility if hudud” became PR policy.
“An initially correct report had come to be replaced by one that was imaginatively concocted,” Zairil (picture) wrote.
He said that a correct version of the article was uploaded on thestar.com.my on September 25 in which the reporter quoted Lim as saying that the party’s CEC would resign if anyone could prove that hudud law was in the Common Policy Framework (CPF) or Buku Jingga.
But a second version was uploaded the next day which changed the headline from “Guan Eng: DAP top leadership will quit if hudud law included in Pakatan policy” to “DAP leaders threaten to quit Pakatan council”.
Zairil said the second article “implied wrongly and falsely that Lim had threatened the resignation of the party’s top leadership” from PR.
PR issued a gag order yesterday on all PR parties, barring their members from speaking on the hudud issue until the pact’s leadership meets tomorrow.
The hudud issue reared its head again recently, reigniting the longstanding squabble among PR parties over whether the Islamic law, which prescribes stoning, whipping and amputation as punishment for criminal offences, should be implemented.
Major newspapers front-paged yesterday the declaration by Lim that his entire DAP central leadership would quit if the controversial law was made a part of PR’s Buku Jingga agenda.
Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who opposed hudud when Kelantan passed the law in 1993, recently reignited the issue when he dared Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat, the state’s mentri besar, to implement hudud now that he was no longer in power.
The PAS spiritual leader then called on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to propose amendments to the federal constitution to allow the Islamic law.
Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim also backed PAS’s stand on introducing hudud in Kelantan but the DAP has insisted that it is not part of their common policy, leading to PR’s unity being questioned.