Malays being used thanks to PAS, says Utusan
By Shannon Teoh, The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, July 10 — As Umno attempts to limit the damage from yesterday’s rally which threw the city into chaos, its newspaper Utusan Malaysia blamed PAS today for encouraging Malays to be the political tools of Bersih chief Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, DAP and Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
The senior partner in the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) has also scrambled to organise a show of support for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who addressed his party faithful this morning in a briefing that hopes to boost morale after tens of thousands poured into the streets yesterday calling for electoral reform.
Utusan Malaysia courted Malay voters by trying to drive a wedge between PAS supporters who attended yesterday’s Bersih rally and those who didn’t, praising those who stayed home for refusing to be used by “anti-Islam” elements.
“Congratulations for taking the wise decision not to be used by anti-Islam elements,” Awang Selamat — the pseudonym for the newspaper’s editors — told PAS supporters who did not join the electoral reform movement’s street rally yesterday.
The Malay daily also said that most of those who protested yesterday were Malay, showing that the Chinese-dominated DAP “were smarter in planning and it is clear that PAS was used.”
News editor Zulkiflee Bakar also mocked PAS’s welfare state agenda by “congratulating” PAS for proving that it is no longer an Islamic party.
“The party is now ready to do welfare by offering its headquarters as a meeting point, ordering its Unit Amal to be the main force of the rally and ordering its members to come to Kuala Lumpur,” he wrote.
He added that PAS was the biggest loser after yesterday’s events, as “Malays will now evaluate the inconsistency of PAS” whose supporters attended the march in Islamic garb but “their behaviour while demonstrating was shameful.”
