Najib’s wayang kulit show to woo Indians

The PM’s appearance at Indian festivals is seen as a public relations exercise for the benefit of Indians.

GEORGE TOWN: Hindraf Makkal Sakti feels that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has started another public relations exercise by attending Indian religious and cultural festivals.

“Najib is now frequently making celebrity-style entrance into these functions to impress Indians,” said  Hindraf national coordinator W Sambulingam.

Sambulingam said if Najib was sincere and honest, he should have implemented a constructive and comprehensive action plan by now for the betterment of the community.

He said the Barisan Nasional federal government should have had allotted free land for all Tamil schools, and converted those under capital-aided scheme to fully-aided ones.

He said the Putrajaya administration should have allotted free land for Hindu temples and provided funds to carry out projects to upgrade landscape of Hindu burial grounds across the country.

He said Najib’s government should have hired more Indians into the civil service and eliminated stateless status of many Indians.

However, he said Najib has instead only given mere lip service to his pledges to uplift the standard of living of the marginalised working class Indians since assuming the captain’s role in Putrajaya administration in 2009.

He said BN has also adopted a new to dupe the Indians by way of organising big scale national Indian religious and cultural events.

Early this month, Najib was ridiculed by several Muslim leaders for joining Hindus in Thaipusam celebration in Batu Caves.

On Sunday, Najib is set to make another celebrity-style entrance to the national-level Ponggal (Harvesting Festival) celebration organised by MIC in joint collaboration with the People’s Progressive Party, Malaysian Makkal Sakti Party, Indian Progressive Front and non-governmental organisations.

The event, which is expected to be attended by some 15,000 people, will be held at the Padang Kelab Kilat TNB, in Kapar, Klang, on Sunday from 6pm to 10.30pm.

“The event is being organised on a big scale for the first time to strengthen unity between the people and MIC,” said MIC secretary-general S Murugesan.

An unimpressed Sambulingam however, questioned the logic behind BN’s organising the national event for Ponggal some one-and-half months after the festival was celebrated by Indians worldwide on Jan 15 this year.

Instead of organising wayang kulit national events, he said BN should have allotted land and business funds for Indians to cultivate crops and, breed cattle since Ponggal was an agro-orientated festival.

“Such constructive policies would have been a real Ponggal for Indians.