The DAP parliamentary leader said this followed Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s announcement last Friday that the government would take over the private member’s bill from PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang.
“After Zahid’s announcement, ministers and leaders from MCA, Gerakan, MIC and other Sabah and Sarawak Barisan Nasional components had claimed that they knew nothing about it and had never agreed to it.
“However, by excluding Sabah and Sarawak from being affected by the bill, Umno has now secured the non-opposition of the Sabah and Sarawak BN ministers and MPs,” Lim said in a statement released today.
The DAP parliamentary leader then threw the challenge to the other main Barisan Nasional component parties – MCA, Gerakan and MIC – asking if they were prepared to leave BN over Umno’s support for Hadi’s private member’s bill and insistence that the federal government take over the bill.
“The real issue is not the merits or demerits of Hadi’s private member’s bill but whether BN has changed its character from a consensus-based coalition of 13 component parties into a political coalition operating solely under the dictates of Umno, at least as far as the peninsula parties like MCA, Gerakan and MIC are concerned.
“I had previously asked whether the 15 non-Umno ministers at the Cabinet meeting today will get Zahid to announce that his announcement last Friday was only the stand of UMNO but not BN, and that Umno respects and accepts the stand of the other 12 BN parties which opposed any BN government takeover of Hadi’s bill.”
Lim said that the even with the “non-opposition” by the Sabah and Sarawak BN MPs, Umno’s takeover of Hadi’s bill in the name of BN, without having discussed it with the leaders and ministers of the other 12 BN component parties, was a critical test case of the consensus character of BN.
“This is different to the founding characteristic of the BN when formed by Tun Abdul Razak in 1973, with Razak, Tun Tan Siew Sin, Tun VT Sambanthan, Dr Lim Chong Eu, and the Sabah and Sarawak BN leaders operating on the basis of consensus.
“Let us now see whether the Umno leadership will succeed in calling the bluff of MCA, Gerakan and MIC at the Cabinet meeting today.”