While Hadi harps on Pakatan’s non-Muslim MPs, numbers show more Muslims are actually govt MPs

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 13 — PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang today hit out against the unity government by highlighting Pakatan Harapan (PH) MPs as being predominantly non-Muslim.

In his attack which seems to zero in on PH, Abdul Hadi however did not mention the other components in the current government — such as Barisan Nasional (BN) — which has Muslim MPs.

Taken together, the unity government has more Muslim MPs than he suggested.

In an article carried on PAS’s newsletter Harakah Daily today, Hadi claimed that PH was now leading the unity government and that PH MPs were dominated by non-Muslims, saying that 50 of them are non-Muslims and only 31 are Muslims.

Hadi claimed that the “unity government” tag was inaccurate as the term should be used to describe a situation when there is no or minor opposition in the government.

MPs in the Dewan Rakyat — Malaysia’s lower house of Parliament — are however not appointed by their parties, but are instead elected through votes by voters.

“Furthermore, this mixed government is mixed with various ideologies such as those who are liberal, left or right-leaning extremists, and opportunists. They are also joined by those whose integrity are disputed such as former prisoners, the court cluster, cronyism and nepotism which are ills in government,” he wrote.

While Hadi’s article focused its criticism on the composition of MPs in PH, news portal Malaysiakini had in a previous fact-checking article on November 30 already debunked the false claim that non-Muslims are dominating the government.

Malaysiakini had included a chart of the composition of government MPs which it tallied to be 148, which showed 50 being Malays, 27 being Muslim Bumiputera from East Malaysia, 43 Chinese, 16 non-Muslim Bumiputera from East Malaysia, 12 Indians and other non-Bumiputeras.

The news portal noted that there is actually a “balanced” composition of government MPs in terms of religious affiliations, with 52 per cent of government MPs being Muslims and the remaining 48 per cent being non-Muslims.

Citing various Islamic teachings and Islamic scriptures, Hadi today also said that the taking over of a government comes with the obligation to rectify wrongs and not to grab positions with privileges and maintaining or worsening harm.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had on February 6 said the PH coalition which he leads actually has 31 per cent of support from Malay voters nationwide instead of merely 11 per cent as claimed, based on a team of data scientists’ preliminary data analysis.

Following GE15 on November 19, 2022 where PN failed to gain the backing of sufficient number of MPs to form the government, the coalition ended up becoming the federal Opposition, with PAS regularly taking potshots at the current government.

For example, PAS had on November 29 made a racially-based attack on the current unity government by also selectively focusing on PH and particularly PH’s component party DAP.

However on the very same day, data scientist Thevesh Theva had provided data on 135 government MPs — drawing from the three biggest components PH, BN and Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) — which appeared to dispel the notion by PAS.

Thevesh’s data of the 135 government MPs showed that the number of Bumiputera MPs is twice as many as MPs of Chinese ethnicity — regardless of whether they are female or male.

Out of the 135 government MPs in Thevesh’s data set, 84 of them are Bumiputera, which translates to 62.2 per cent or almost two-thirds.