A huge rift in Barisan Nasional

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Aug 6, 2009

By Guan Sin

Pardon the rather glaring headline. But it is not at all untrue. Let me explain the context.

We have been hearing many news reports for months about issues within Pakatan Rakyat at national and state government levels. Understandably so, as the mainstream media is basically government controlled and some of it has degraded to be solely political instrument to bring down Pakatan by Barisan.

But when even Malaysiakini, an independent media outlet, carries a headline like “Now a rift in Selangor Pakatan” over the alcohol ban issue, it forces us to think: what is really missing?

You can get some hint of the answer from what happens inside Barisan when Utusan Malaysia has been barking racism for months. Hence my headline here. Take the response of Lim Si Pin, Youth leader of Gerakan, one of the component parties in Barisan. The following is what he has to say on latest Utusan’s bark “Melayu jangan jadi bacul”:

These articles containing seditious remarks could lead to racial disharmony in the country… since Utusan was owned by Umno, they should not undermine the prime minister’s efforts in implementing unity in the country by publishing articles with racial overtones. These types of comment pieces openly contradict and challenge the 1Malaysia concept propagated by Najib Razak. [I]f Utusan was trying to use the paper as a way of pushing its agenda, it would not be successful as many people today have access to alternative information.

What Si Pin says is simply sensible. More significantly, what he says represents a rift in Barisan as huge as the Grand Canyon.