Kit Siang: '1Malaysia vague as Umno refuses backing'

DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang said the reason the 1Malaysia concept was kept vague, as admitted by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, was because Umno refused to back it.

"Najib is making a virtue out of necessity, trying to camouflage his failure to get the endorsement of the Umno leadership for his 1Malaysia policy as a deliberate stance of strategic ambiguity to get more people 'on board' the concept," he said in a statement released yesterday.

Lim (right) was responding to the premier's interview in the Malay Mail on Friday, where Najib was quoted as saying that 1Malaysia had a "strategic ambiguity" so that it could be defined by the public over time.

However, the premier had added in the interview that people now understood the concept.

Lim pointed out that the 1Malaysia concept was defined from the beginning in the Government Transformation Programme Roadmap which stated it hoped that people would view themselves as Malaysians first.

"It is clear right from the beginning Najib could not get the Umno leadership and the cabinet to endorse his 1Malaysia policy.

"Umno is still fully committed to the exclusive ideology of Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) which is the very antithesis to a supposedly-inclusive 1Malaysia concept," he said.

To back his point, Lim gave the example of Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin's (left) declaration that he wasMalay first over Malaysian first.

Another example, he said, was the rendition of a song at the recently concluded Umno General Assembly, bemoaning the fate of Malays for supposedly being sidelined in their own land.

Instead of achieving inclusiveness as the slogan was originally defined, Lim said it has degenerated into electioneering gimmickry with give-aways such as 1Malaysia T-shirts, tupperware, notebooks, water tanks, clinics, housing and cash aid.