Playing the religion game

The failure of Najib to control Chua's illogical rantings is obvious to many of the urban Malays and this gives the lie to Umno's claims as the defender of Islam.

COMMENT

Are both Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek vying with each other to see who is the dumbest person where political strategy is concerned?

This is the scenario. Chua has certainly overdone it in regards to wooing the Chinese. He has insulted Islam in the recent MCA annual general assembly held on Oct 20 and 21 by defending the claim of a MCA Wanita deputy minister who had said that PAS condones the rape of non-Muslim women who do not conform to the Islamic dress code.

By this crazy bone-headed move, Chua has certainly alienated the Malay voters.

And to top it all, PM Najib who has all along proclaimed that Umno champions Islam and Malays had the cheek to keep quiet at the assembly.

The prime minister must have thought that as BN controls the mainstream media, Chua’s antics would not reach the ears of the rural Malays.

There is the power of the internet. And that is the reason why there is a lack of internet coverage in the rural areas.

Nevertheless, the rural folks’ children who are studying in the city have access to the internet and therefore news from the websites would also reach the rural folks when their children go back home during the national or festive holidays.

Readers can be sure that Najib will be going all out to do damage control in the forthcoming Umno annual general assembly scheduled to be held from Nov 27 to Dec 1 by whipping up fervour in regards to ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ or ‘Malay Supremacy’.

The failure of Najib to control Chua’s illogical rantings is obvious to many of the urban Malays and this gives the lie to Umno’s claims as the defender of Islam.

Chua only bothers about the survival of MCA. Therefore he goes all out for the kill in a kamikaze manner.

It is Najib who is foolish for allowing Chua to dance ‘Gangnam style’ on his head. The urban Malays and those who are fence-sitters have now seen clearly Najib’s cowardice.

Dirty electoral roll

Kuala Krai MP, Hatta Ramli who is the PAS election director has raised the issue that more and more foreign-sounding names are appearing in the electoral roll.

He has voiced out his anger and disappointment at the Election Commission (EC) for not doing anything to clean up the electoral roll.

“The EC and the prime minister himself are not concerned at all about the dirty electoral roll and out of this dirty roll a dirty government will be elected,” remarked Hatta.

Back to the antics of MCA’s Chua and PM Najib. After Chua’s senseless attack on Islam, there is no way Najib can win the 13th general election in a fair fight. He had sat on the stage of the MCA general assembly keeping quiet when Chua was blazing away with the insults. Najib had allowed Chua to do so as he is desperate to obtain the Chinese votes.

This is a very clear indication that Najib is still in a denial mode where Chinese votes is concerned because everyone knows that 80% of the Chinese have rejected his leadership.

Chua may be dumb to insult Islam but Najib is dumber still for allowing it!

From a recent ground survey conducted by this columnist who interviewed ten apolitical fence-sitters, all of them share the same view that Najib is lacking direction in his plans. It can be seen that his solutions are only piecemeal efforts and one-off measures and the fence-sitters opined that perhaps it is time that he is “one-offed on polling day”.

The fact that he lacked the courage to reprimand Chua has earned him widespread chastisement on Facebook.

Therefore, Najib now tries to target the Indian voters.

Making the Indians happy

DAP’s Teluk Intan MP, M Manogaran has informed this columnist he had heard news that Deepavali will be celebrated on a very grand scale to make the Indian community happy.

Najib will go all out to woo the Indians as Indian votes play a big role in many seats in Kedah, Perak and Selangor. It is evident that BN always woo the Indians with goodies nearing elections and the Indians must wise-up to BN’s tactics in order not to be fooled time and time again.

After all, Deepavali is to celebrate the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness.

To sum up, Chua’s and Najib’s games are simple. Chua uses PAS to frighten the Chinese by saying that PAS wants to have absolute control over Malaysia while Najib uses DAP to scare the Malays by saying that DAP wants to do the same.

Their all-out methods are obvious for all to see. They do not care what people think because they are now going for broke in trying to woo their respective race groups.

However, Chua is the more gung-ho of the two as Najib dares not debate with Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim whereas Chua has debated with Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.

Selena Tay is a FMT columnist.