‘What more does Kit Siang want?’, asks Utusan
“What more does Kit Siang want? Isn’t it enough that during campaigning Kit Siang who supposedly fights for true democracy lets DAP leaders insult Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders? Isn’t he happy when DAP has succeeded in resisting PAS’s Islamic fight including for hudud?” asked Zulkiflee in his column. “So we ask, what more does Kit Siang want? Didn’t he think that what he is doing right now, including insulting Umno leaders, might incite a reaction from the Malays?” he added, warning the DAP adviser not to “play with fire” in flaming the people’s sentiments.
Zurairi AR, TMI
Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia suggested today that by insulting Umno the DAP’s Lim Kit Siang could expect a strong reaction from Malays.
Under the headline “What more does Kit Siang want?”, the newspaper’s senior editor Zulkiflee Bakar accused Lim and the DAP of endangering the safety of Malaysians and breaking the law in a series of allegedly illegal rallies held in the past few days.
“What more does Kit Siang want? Isn’t it enough that during campaigning Kit Siang who supposedly fights for true democracy lets DAP leaders insult Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders? Isn’t he happy when DAP has succeeded in resisting PAS’s Islamic fight including for hudud?” asked Zulkiflee in his column.
“So we ask, what more does Kit Siang want? Didn’t he think that what he is doing right now, including insulting Umno leaders, might incite a reaction from the Malays?” he added, warning the DAP adviser not to “play with fire” in flaming the people’s sentiments.
The newspaper has been consistently highlighting the DAP and Chinese voters in its tone of coverage and editorials since last week’s general election.
In Election 2013, BN won the polls but lost the popular vote.
Umno president Datuk Seri Najib Razak had suggested a “Chinese tsunami” had caused his BN to record its worst-ever electoral results.
Utusan, the newspaper owned by Umno, has also suggested Chinese voters were provoking racial tensions by voting against BN, with one headline last week asking the question “Apa lagi Cina mahu? (What else do the Chinese want?)”
The newspaper — seen as being aligned with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad — and other party leaders have consistently argued that votes against the Umno-led BN were akin to voting against the Malays.
This is despite the fact that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) parties PAS and PKR are largely Malay-Muslim in their membership. The DAP also fielded Malay candidates in the elections.
On Saturday, Najib defended his party from accusations of racism, and instead accused the DAP of being racists.
Despite the claims from Umno, analyses of the Election 2013 results point to a urban-rural divide rather than a Malay-Chinese division in the way Malaysians voted last week.
While a majority of Chinese backed PR parties, a significant number of Malay voters also voted for the opposition parties, particularly in urban centres.
Yesterday, Datuk Zulkifli Noordin raised the spectre of May 13 when he accused the DAP and Lim of being behind Malaysia’s worst race riots even as Umno leaders continue to blame last week’s poor election results on a “Chinese tsunami” that was fanned by the PR party.
The controversial Perkasa vice-president, who was a direct BN losing candidate in Election 2013, made the allegations in a series of tweets sent out on the eve of the 44th anniversary of the riots.
Lim has frequently been the target of right-wing Malay groups who have singled him out for blame for the riots even though he was not even in Kuala Lumpur when the riots broke out.
Former Umno member Tamrin Ghafar had cleared Lim while on the stump of the Election 2013 campaign trail, saying that Umno itself was behind the riot.
The son of former Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Ghafar Baba said he was told by former home minister, the late Tun Ghazali Shafie, that the May 13 riots were likely the result of an internal Umno coup against founding Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman.
Today, Utusan claimed that Lim had insulted Najib at one of his post-election rallies, where he allegedly said “the devil we know has become the prime minister”.
