Zul Noordin fans ‘Chinese tsunami’ row, says DAP behind May 13
(TMI) – Datuk Zulkifli Noordin raised the spectre of May 13 last night when he accused the DAP and Lim Kit Siang 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 Pakatan Rakyat (PR) party.
The controversial Perkasa vice-president, who was a direct Barisan Nasional (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.
“Tomorrow is May 13… the 44th anniversary of race riots in Malaysia which was the atrocity of chauvinists including Kit Siang’s party which used the slogan Malai-Seh or Die Malays,” he tweeted late last night.
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.
But 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.
According to police records, 196 people were killed in the riots which were largely clashes between Malay and Chinese groups, following the results of the general election held a few days earlier.
In the 1969 elections, the Alliance coalition of Umno, the MCA and MIC lost the popular vote but won the elections.
In Election 2013, BN, the successor to the Alliance also won the polls but lost the popular vote.
Umno president Datuk Seri Najib Razak suggested a “Chinese tsunami” had caused his BN to record its worst-ever electoral results.
Utusan Malaysia, the newspaper owned by Umno, has also suggested Chinese voters were provoking race 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.
