Hindraf chairman P Waythamoorthy today said he was amused by MIC’s reported lack of awareness on the matter.
“It is a practical joke when the MIC president comes up with such a ludicrous statement claiming that they are waiting to be briefed by the Prime Minister when a two-paragraph amendment has been hovering over more than a year,” he said.
MIC president Dr S Subramaniam was reported to have told reporters yesterday that the matter was not informed to the MIC.
He said the party had aired its views to Prime Minister Najib Razak during a meeting two weeks ago.
He added that the party will only make its stand after Najib, who is Barisan Nasional (BN) chairman, has met component party leaders about the issue soon.
“We will wait for the meeting and after that we will know what has been suggested, and our stand on the matter after that,” he said.
Waythamoorthy said Subramaniam’s statement proved nothing more than MIC and the 11 other coalition members in BN being “lame ducks and slaves of Umno”.
“They do not have the guts to oppose the unconstitutional creeping of Islamisation through the back door surpassing the need to amend the Federal Constitution.”
He said Umno’s coalition partners had been made into “bystanders” as the party “steamrolled” over them in proceeding with the bill.
On March 17, Deputy Prime Minister and Umno Deputy President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had said the Umno-led federal government would table the controversial shariah amendment bill proposed by PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang in the Dewan Rakyat soon.
He said Umno could afford to lose some old friends as it would gain a new one, referring to PAS, that would be together with Umno in a larger grouping.
Hadi had put forward the private member’s bill in the house last year.
It seeks to raise the maximum penalties for shariah offences to 30 years’ jail, RM100,000 for fines and 100 strokes of the cane. Shariah court punishment is currently capped at jail terms not exceeding three years, a maximum of RM5,000 for fines and whipping of not more than six strokes of the cane.
Waythamoorthy said it was “amazing” that Zahid did not give “two hoots” about what coalition partners thought about the matter.
He said the non-Muslim community, comprising more than 45% of Malaysia’s population, as well as many sceptical Muslims cannot perceive such authoritarian state control.
“It is a foregone conclusion that the coalition partners are mere rubber stamps of the Umno hegemony to maintain power as seen with the impotence and ineptness of MIC’s stance,” he said.