KUALA LUMPUR, March 14 — Member of Parliament for Kuala Nerus Datuk Mohd Khairuddin Aman Razali has quit from Islamist party PAS effective today (March 14).

Khairuddin — who was recently sacked as PAS Syura Ulama Council secretary — handed in his resignation letter to PAS secretary-general Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan at 2.30pm in Parliament.

He said that he will now be an independent MP in Dewan Rakyat.

“I would like to give a million thank you’s to PAS for accepting me into the party way back in 1999 when I was just 16.

“In my 33 years in PAS, I held several leadership positions throughout the years when I came back from Jordan, with my last one being the PAS Syura Ulama Council secretary,” he said in a press conference in Parliament.

He also thanked PAS for giving him the opportunity to contest twice at General Elections, before becoming the Kuala Nerus MP in 2013.

Khairuddin has been in the spotlight several times over the past two years, after he caught the public’s attention in July 2020 when Seputeh MP Teresa Kok questioned why the then minister had not been placed under the mandatory 14-day home quarantine after returning from an official trip from Turkey.

He had also attended a Dewan Rakyat sitting during the quarantine period, to which he was subsequently fined RM1,000 and made a public apology after public backlash.

On January 14 this year, Khairuddin was dropped as a member of PAS’ central working committee less than two months after being appointed to the post.

PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang said the decision to dismiss the 48-year-old Kuala Nerus MP was made in a party meeting held at its headquarters but did not elaborate on the reason for his removal.

The Kuala Nerus MP was one of three PAS leaders who was reappointed into the party central committee for the 2021-2023 term last November, despite losing in the internal election.

Instead, Hadi told reporters that PAS members who do not follow the party’s discipline “can be changed, work elsewhere, have his membership suspended or sacked”.

A month later, on February 11, Khairuddin lost another important party post after being sacked as PAS Syura Ulama Council secretary.

Khairuddin was also formerly the minister of industries, plantations, and commodities in Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s government.