This is the great difference between BN and PH, says Kit Siang

(FMT) – The DAP parliamentary leader says the PH message is the same to all but the BN message is tailored to different audiences and plays on race and religion.

Lim Kit Siang said last night that a major difference between the Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Harapan was that the BN said different things to different races while the PH said the same thing to everyone.

The MP for Gelang Patah said the message from PH leaders was the same, but the message of BN leaders depended on the racial and religious composition of the audience and played on racial and religious fears of that particular audience.

“The BN coalition leaders talk in forked tongues – Umno leaders playing the race and religious cards among the Malays, inciting fears among the Malay voters with lies that DAP and I are anti-Malay and anti-Islam, that Tun Mahathir (Mohamad), Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Mohamad Sabu are all my stooges and can only say and do what I tell them to do.

“But MCA and Gerakan leaders say the opposite, and try to scare the Chinese with a different story, that I am a puppet of Tun Mahathir and Anwar Ibrahim.

“But we in Pakatan Harapan, whether DAP, PKR, Amanah or PBBM; whether Mahathir, Muhyiddin, Azizah, Azmin, Mohd Sabu, Guan Eng or I myself say the same thing whether to Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans or Ibans.”

He said the PH message to all was that the time had come for Malaysians regardless of race, religion, socio-economic status, region or even politics to unite and save Malaysia from ruin.

The DAP supremo reiterated that his differences with former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had always been over government policies and actions.

It had never been personal and he had never called him such names as “mahazalim” (terribly cruel), he said at a DAP Port Klang Branch dinner.

He said it was public record that he and Mahathir had many great differences during his 22 years as prime minister, and that he and his son Lim Guan Eng had become “guests of His Majesty’s Government” during Mahathir’s premiership.

“But I had never been personal, vengeful or vindictive – I had never called Mahathir ‘mahafiraun’ or ‘mahazalim’ – as our differences were always on government policies and actions.

“I do not deny my differences with Mahathir in the past, but we are now united by a larger common goal to save Malaysia from kleptocracy, a failed and a rogue state, and the fate of a third-world nation.”

He said only a change of Federal Government in the forthcoming 14th General Election could save Malaysia from being a “global kleptocracy”.

“But we do not want only a Pakatan Harapan Federal Government in the 14GE, we have higher goals – to maintain the Pakatan Harapan state governments in Selangor and Penang as well as to win the state governments in Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Perak and Kedah.”

Lim said he was in Kuching on Sunday night with Dr Mahathir for the launch of the Sarawak Pakatan Harapan, and the support and fervour at the gathering was “proof that the country is on the move involving all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, socio-economic status or region, who want to save Malaysia from the trajectory of a failed and a rogue state”.