The opposition leader urged voters to reject the Barisan Nasional (BN) in the 13th general election and support the DAP-PKR-PAS pact to save the country from corruption, power abuses and racial politics.
The Ipoh-Timor MP pointed to events in the 24 hours since Saturday’s debate between his son and DAP secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, and MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, as well as Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s comment equating a vote for DAP to a vote for PAS and support for fundamental Islam.
“The racist, irresponsible and dishonest Barisan Nasional propaganda, warning the Chinese that ‘A vote for DAP is a vote for PAS’ and the Malay voters that ‘A vote for PAS is a vote for DAP’, is a total affront to the concept of 1 Malaysia,” the senior Lim said, adding these also conflicted with “Najib’s preachings calling on the moderates of the world to unite against extremists everywhere.”
“No sane, rational and responsible political coalition would have used such diametrically conflicting canards,” he said in a statement today.
He pointed out that the comments from the BN’s two oldest parties were contradictory as the DAP could not be both a stooge to PAS, as Dr Chua claimed, and Islamist party’s puppet master, as Najib said yesterday.
“But even more serious, this marked another important milestone in the Najib premiership — that in less than three years, the sixth prime minister of Malaysia has ‘given up the ghost’ on his signature 1 Malaysia policy to create a Malaysia where Malaysians regard themselves as Malaysians first and their race, religion, region or socio-economic status second,” the veteran lawmaker said.
He stressed that the conflicting claims showed up the BN’s hypocrisy and bankruptcy of ideas, which he said were the basic electoral campaigns of Umno and MCA.
Dr Chua had warned voters that their support for the DAP would lead to the setting up of an Islamic state with a strict enforcement of the fundamental Islamic penal code. Separately, Najib had said that “a vote for PAS is a vote for DAP” that would result in a country that was anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers.
Lim has been eviscerating Najib’s 1 Malaysia slogan since the PM introduced it in 2009, after he took office and replaced Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Race relations in Malaysia appear to have grown tense since Election 2008, especially between Muslims and non-Muslims, leading to the formation of an interfaith Cabinet committee to try and bridge that divide.
Progress, if any, appears to have been outpaced by the rate with which Malaysians are growing more polarised, as exemplified by the Muslim Scholars Association calling for an update to guidelines for interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims.
