KUALA LUMPUR, April 23 – Lim Kit Siang mocked Datuk Seri Najib Razak as being “another Pak Lah” for failing to control his party newspaper, Utusan Malaysia, which proposed a narrow racial movement that contradicts the prime minister’s 1 Malaysia concept.
The DAP leader (picture) compared Najib to the country’s fifth prime minister, Tun Abdullah Badawi, who has often been described as weak and unable to control his own men in Umno.
“Is Najib becoming another Pak Lah – a prime minister whose writ does not run in Umno?” Lim asked in a statement today.
“This question has become more pronounced after Najib’s meek and completely unacceptable stance over Utusan Malaysia’s ‘1Melayu, 1Bumi’ call,” he said.
When responding to the matter yesterday, Najib had distanced his administration from the daily’s suggestion by saying that it had been made by a columnist and was the writer’s personal opinion.
“Najib’s excuse might be acceptable if Utusan Melayu is not the official organ of Umno, whose columns represent the mainstream opinion and demands of the Umno leadership in government,” Lim pointed out.
Utusan Malaysia’s assistant chief editor Datuk Zaini Hassan had recently called on the daily’s owners Umno to spearhead a “1Melayu, 1Bumi movement” involving all Malay parties, claiming that the DAP was intent on toppling the country’s Malay leadership.
The columnist opined that the Malay community needed to aggressively move to unite and strengthen itself, claiming that the Chinese were already a united force in the country.
The suggestion came following the Sarawak polls, where the DAP snapped up 12 of the 15 mainly Chinese-majority seats it had contested, spurring groups to claim that the pact was intent on destroying the Malay leadership by appealing to the Chinese vote.
Lim also argued that Najib’s “meek stance” was unacceptable as the “1Melayu, 1Bumi” movement was clearly an affront to his 1 Malaysia policy, which calls for inclusiveness among all races.
“It is tantamount to an open slap in the face of the prime minister’s signature concept,” he said.
The Ipoh Timor MP predicted that if any Chinese daily had suggested a “1Chinese” campaign, it would have been shut down immediately and its editor slapped with a sedition charge.
“Why the double standards in the case of Utusan Malaysia?” he said.
Lim called on the Cabinet during its next meeting to repudiate and condemn Utusan Malaysia’s call as “irresponsible, seditious and a subtle attempt to destroy 1 Malaysia”.
Najib, he said, should also prove his disapproval by revamping the daily to ensure that it stopped its anti-national campaign.
“If the Cabinet is silent on Utusan Malaysia’s ‘1Melayu, 1Bumi’, it could only mean that Najib’s 1 Malaysia policy is sheer hypocrisy and chicanery costing Malaysian taxpayers RM70 million for APCO to package it as the greatest gift by Najib to Malaysians,” he said.
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