We never threatened to quit Pakatan Rakyat: DAP

Sep 27: DAP has strongly denied that its secretary general Lim Guan Eng had threatened to quit Pakatan Rakyat's leadership council due to differences over the Hudud law, and said MCA-controlled The Star, which has been dedicating its pages on the Islamic deterrent punishment for serious crimes, had twisted his words.

In a letter today, Lim’s political secretary Zairil Khir Johari stressed that Lim had instead pledge that the party's Central Executive Committee (CEC) would resign en-masse "if anyone can prove that Hudud law would be implemented in the Common Policy Framework (CPF) or Buku Jingga that has been presented to the public.”

Buku Jingga, or the Orange Book, outlines the coalition's common policies in governance as well as reforms it said would be carried out within the first hundreds days of power at the Federal level.

According to Zairil, the paper had initially published a correct report on its online version, but the next day, it said DAP would quit PR, under the heading "DAP leaders threaten to quit Pakatan council".

“This is categorically untrue as Lim had neither made any threats to quit the Pakatan Rakyat leadership council, nor the Pakatan Rakyat in general," he said, and urged the daily to explain the stark contradictions.

Earlier, MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek (right) threatened to pull out from Barisan Nasional if UMNO lent support to any attempt by Kelantan to implement the popular Hudud laws there.

This followed a statement by UMNO deputy president Muhyiddin Yasin saying that as a Muslim, he could not oppose the laws, but would not implement them at present.

Yesterday, PR issued a gag order on leaders across the three parties from issuing any statements on the hudud row, until they meet on September 28.

“We do not want to blame anyone for having issued statements about hudud but it has been blown out of proportion now.

“Hence we decided that until the 28th (Wednesday), there must be no longer any statements issued on this matter from all three parties, whether PAS, PKR or DAP,” said PAS secretary general Mustafa Ali, in a joint statement with his PKR counterpart Saifuddin Nasution and DAP deputy secretary general Anthony Loke.