A WEEK after the vote of confidence in Parliament on the position of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as Malaysia’s 10th Prime Minister (PM), more and more Malaysians are coming to the view that there is now a higher chance of Anwar lasting five years as Prime Minister.
On the other extreme, however, this has also strengthened the resolve of naysayers who have not given up their plot to topple Anwar’s government ala-Sheraton Move.
The first Sheraton Move political conspiracy started with the toxic politics of lies, fear, hate, race and religion over the ratification of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).
The creation of fear and hate based on falsehoods by the mastermind of the movement accused the DAP of being behind the plot to ratify ICERD.
PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang knows that the ICERD issue in 2018 had nothing to do with the DAP as DAP ministers and leaders were as surprised as anyone by the then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s speech at the United Nations’ (UN) general assembly in September 2018 to ratify the core UN human rights covenants.
But Hadi has done nothing in the past four years to apologise to the DAP or to admit his mistakes in hurling lies and falsehoods against the DAP with regard to the ICERD ratification issue in 2018.
Hadi has erred yet again
Instead, Hadi is now back to his old tricks again.
His open letter last week claiming that the Malay voter turnout rate was lower compared to other races in the 15th General Election (GE15) is not only “baseless” but the first step to bringing down the Anwar government ala-Sheraton Move.
Political analyst Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham Malaysia said Malays accounted for the highest percentage of voters, according to data she collected.
She said the lower voter turnout rate of the Chinese and other non-Malay ethnic groups refutes Hadi’s claim that 98% of non-Muslims – including those residing abroad – voted in GE15 to “support DAP” while only 60% of Muslims voted.
Hadi warned that those who did not vote might have sinned “as they had disobeyed God’s command as stated by the Prophet Muhammad”.
Welsh said Hadi’s claims repeated his narrative about Malays as being politically threatened, adding that the claims were unsubstantiated.
Welsh cited her analysis which showed that the turnout rate of Malay voters at GE15 was 79%, followed by Indian voters (78%), Chinese voters (69%) and other races (59%).
Although Malay turnout was higher than that of other races, she said not all supported Perikatan Nasional (PN), of which PAS is a component. Of Malays who did vote, only 54% supported PN.
Hadi is again very wrong. DAP represents not only the non-Malays and non-Muslims but all Malaysians – including Malays and Muslims.
Majority of urban dwellers are Bumiputeras
The 2010 and 2020 Population and Housing Census debunked Hadi’s toxic politics of lies and falsehoods to engender fear and hate in Malaysia’s plural society.
According to the Population and Housing Census of Malaysia 2020, three-quarters of Malaysians live in urban settings with most urban-dwellers being of Bumiputera ethnicity.
Some 14.1 million or 62.6% of urbanites are Bumiputera, followed by ethnic Chinese at 6.4 million (28.6%), ethnic Indians (1.8 million or 8.1%), and other ethnicities (200,000 or 0.7%).
The Bumiputera proportion has grown compared to the last census in 2010 when 58.9% of urban dwellers were Bumiputera, according to the Department of Statistics Malaysia.
Data from the Election Commission revealed that a total of 21,173,638 Malaysians voted in GE15 compared with 14,940,624 in GE14.
Furthermore, it will not be possible for DAP to win 12 parliamentary seats with all the other contending candidates losing their deposits if the winning DAP candidate had not won the vote of all racial groups in the constituency.
The 12 parliamentary seats where all the contending candidates to the DAP candidate lost their deposits in GE15 are Tanjong, Bagan, Bukit Gelugor, Bukit Bendera, Ipoh Barat, Batu Gajah, Segambut, Kepong, Cheras, Bukit Bintang and Seputeh.
Furthermore, DAP won 15 of the 20 constituencies with the largest majorities, led by DAP national deputy chairman, Gobind Singh Deo, who won the Damansara parliamentary seat with a gigantic majority of 124, 619 votes.
The other 19 constituencies with huge majorities from 43,882-vote majorities upwards were: Subang, Klang, Kota Raja, Bangi, Seputeh, Bukit Gelugor, Kepong, Iskandar Puteri, Segambut, Puchong, Bukit Mertajam, Ipoh Barat, Cheras, Batu Gajah, Bagan, Pandan, Kota Melaka, Tanah Merah and Ipoh Timur.
It is impossible for DAP to win so many parliamentary constituencies with such huge majorities without the support of voters from all ethnic groups.
Don’t expect apology
The DAP which has three Malay MPs in Parliament will continue to be a party of Malaysians whether Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Dayaks or Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs.
I do not expect Hadi to apologise for his latest toxic politics of lies, hate, fear, race and religion but to continue to conjure new lies and falsehoods to generate fear and hate in Malaysia.
Malaysia must have freedom of expression based on facts and opinions, but we must guard against the toxic and divisive politics of lies, fear, hate, race and religion which can destroy multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural Malaysia. – Dec 27, 2022
Retired DAP supremo and veteran lawmaker Lim Kit Siang was the former MP for Iskandar Puteri.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
