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The PAS Islamic State blueprint will ratchet up  the UMNO-PAS competition to out-Islam and out-Islamic-state each other  to a new and unprecedented level with grave damage to the very fabric of the 46-year social contract and Merdeka Constitution of Malaysia as a secular nation with Islam as the official religion but not an Islamic state Speech - at the DAP Serdang Branch Thousand-People Solidarity Anniversary dinner   by Lim Kit Siang (Sri Kembangan,  Friday): The PAS Islamic State blueprint, which  violates the “social contract” of the major communities that Malaysia is a secular nation with Islam as the official religion but not an Islamic state, is the latest and most serious escalation of the competition between PAS and UMNO to out-Islam and out-Islamic-State  each other.  It was only recently in September that PAS leaders were saying publicly that the party does not have  any  Islamic State blueprint, even declaring that the Islamic state concept is not in the PAS constitution and was used by the media to frighten the people.  However, in the escalating competition between UMNO and PAS to out-Islam and out-Islamic-State each other, PAS felt compelled to up the ante in response to UMNO pressures, such as the “929 Declaration” of Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at the Gerakan National Delegates Conference on Sept. 29, 2001 that Malaysia is an Islamic State and Mahathir’s speech at the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) Summit on Oct. 16, where his attack on Jewish global domination made him the  hero in  the Muslim world.  The PAS Islamic State blueprint threatens the very bedrock of the 46-year “social contract” on the supremacy of the Federal Constitution, replacing it with the supremacy of the syariah law.   It is meaningless for it to say that it would respect the Federal Constitution with the necessary amendments, when one of these amendments is to  strike at  its very foundation by replacing the supremacy of the 46-year Merdeka Constitution with the supremacy of the syariah law.   Although there is no possibility in the next general election that PAS can put its Islamic State blueprint into practice – as the issue in the next general election is still whether it is possible to deny Barisan Nasional its unbroken  two-thirds majority in Parliament – the PAS Islamic State blueprint can have far-reaching consequences to change  the Malaysian nation as it will ratchet up the UMNO-PAS competition to out-Islam and out-Islamic-State each other   to a new and unprecedented level  with grave damage to the very fabric of the 46-year social contract and Merdeka Constitution of Malaysia as a secular nation with Islam as the official religion but not an Islamic state, whether ala-PAS or ala-UMNO. This was why two Malaysian news made world headlines in the global village in the past month, given prominent coverage in the media  in the countries  in the West, including small-town newspapers and publications in the United States, viz  Mahathir’s anti-Jewish speech at the OIC Summit and the PAS Islamic State blueprint, the former because of a sense of “outrage” in  the West and the latter because of a sense of “foreboding” in the West that  another country was embarking on the road of an Islamic State!  Malaysia started  on the  spiral of UMNO-PAS competition to out-Islam and out-Islamic-state the country  after the 1999 general election after UMNO suffered its greatest electoral defeat and PAS became the sole opposition beneficiary, winning 27 Parliamentary seats while the DAP was marginalized with 10 seats.  As a result, the only political force that could have checked the UMNO-PAS competition to out-Islam and out-Islamic-State each other was removed, as MCA and Gerakan could never play such a role, as evident from their ready acceptance of the arbitrary and unconstitutional  “929 Declaration” that Malaysia is an Islamic State, although it went against the fundamental constitutional principle and nation-building cornerstone agreed by the major communities in the “social contract” and entrenched in the 1957 Merdeka Constitution, the 1963 Malaysia Agreement and the 1970 Rukunegara.  The next general election will be the last opportunity for Malaysia to put a stop to the spiral of competition between UMNO and PAS to out-Islam and out-Islamic-State Malaysia with the return of a strong parliamentary DAP presence to put the country back on track of a democratic, secular, multi-religious, prosperous and progressive Malaysia with Islam as the official religion but not an Islamic state. (14/11/2003) * Lim Kit Siang, DAP National Chairman