Group says Kelantan hudud law requires constitution rewrite

A Christian fellowship and 33 civil society groups from Sabah and Sarawak said the Federal Constitution has to be rewritten if Kelantan's hudud enactment is passed by Parliament.

Apr 15, 2015

A Christian fellowship and 33 civil society groups from Sabah and Sarawak said the Federal Constitution has to be rewritten if Kelantan's hudud enactment is passed by Parliament.

The Kuching Ministers’ Fellowship (KMF), a network of church pastors and leaders in Sarawak, said this was because Kelantan’s hudud law breaches the secular foundation upon which Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak had agreed on in the formation of Malaysia.

“Any fundamental change to this package changes the very basis upon which the Christians in Sarawak also agreed to form Malaysia and it requires a thorough re-negotiation of the Federal Constitution,” said KMF chairman, Daron Tan.

Expressing solidarity with the Sabah Council of Churches over its opposition to the hudud law, Tan said the introduction of the law was “a fundamental breach and deviation from the expressed commitment to complete religious freedom, a key term underpinning the Malaysia Agreement signed in July 1963 between Sarawak, Sabah and Malaya”.

“The original basis upon which these three territories formed secular Malaysia has been broken in a very fundamental way.

“The recently passed Kelantan hudud enactment is in direct contradiction to the aspirations of founding fathers of our nation to keep Malaysia a secular state as evidenced in several historical documents that explicitly state this.

“The criminal justice system remains a federal jurisdiction and is part of the entire constitutional package embodied in the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution.

“Any fundamental change to this package changes the very basis upon which the Christians in Sarawak also agreed to form Malaysia and it requires a thorough re-negotiation of the Federal Constitution,” he said.

Tan urges all “Bible-believing Christians” in Sarawak to stand firm against “any fundamental shift" in the country’s law that will affect them, and said the government must strive to keep Malaysia a secular nation in which all religious faiths can co-exist.

He said lawmakers should not pass any legislation that “changes the foundations laid by our founding fathers”.

Meanwhile, the 33 civil society groups are demanding for a renegotiation of the Constitution if Kelantan is given the power over criminal justice under Article 76A, and said the passing would be a “constitutional coup against the 1963 Malaysia Agreement" if the power is given whether through a government bill or a private member’s bill.

They demanded that Putrajaya, as well as Sabah and Sarawak governments to “prevent a constitutional crisis that erodes the moral basis of Malaysia as a nation”, to convene “a Malaysia Summit” to deliberate on a new constitution where Sabah and Sarawak may have other rights devolved if Kelantan were to have its own criminal justice system.

The NGOs said the summit should be attended by all lawmakers and executive branch at the federal and state levels.

Like KMF, the groups said that in forming Malaysia with Malaya and Singapore in 1963, Sabah and Sarawak signed up for a secular federation, “not a theocratic one where any religious criminal justice system may be in force in any part of the federation”.

“Religious freedom was amongst the top demands of Sabah and Sarawak in the Malaysia negotiations which produced the Inter-Governmental Committee Report and eventually the 1963 Malaysia Agreement.

“Sabah and Sarawak would not have been part of Malaysia if shariah criminal law was an item in the negotiation,” they stated.

The groups, among them the Borneo Resources Institute Malaysia (Brismas), Damn the Dams and Baramkini from Sarawak; the Archdiocesan Human Development Commission (AHDC) of Kota Kinabalu, Belia Saint Aloysius Limbanak and the Consumer Association and Protection Sabah (CAPS) from Sabah, said any fundamental change to Malaysia's secular justice system requires a thorough renegotiation of the Constitution.--The Malaysian Insider