‘Take care of your grandkids, Mahathir’

Indian NGOs are staging a protest against the ex-PM tomorrow over his call to form a RCI to probe the granting of citizenship prior to independence.

PETALING JAYA: A coalition of Indian NGOs is incensed with former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad over his call to investigate the granting of citizenship prior to independence.

“Mahathir should just stay at home, keep quiet and take care of his grandchildren… enough…enough….enough! The rakyat are really fed-up.

“It seems that thousands of Indians are left in limbo over their citizenship unlike in Sabah where immigrants were given citizenship for his political agenda.

“He has no right to compare himself with Tunku Abdul Rahman (the father of independence),” said Malaysian Indian Progressive Association (Mipas) secretary-general S Barathidasan.

The NGO leader said that setting up a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) as suggested by Mahathir would be a waste of time.

Malaysians, he stressed, had lost their “trust, confidence and respect” for the former prime minister, who stepped down in 2003 after more than two decades in office.

Mahathir’s racist remarks, he added, were potentially seditious as it was tantamount to alleging that Chinese and Indians had at the time gained their citizenship through illegal means.

“We find that there is no need to re-ignite a debate on the awarding of citizenship prior to the nation’s independence as it has already been accepted as a historical fact,” he added.

On Saturday, Mahathir said that the granting of citizenships to one million foreign immigrants who came to Malaysia before independence was done by Tunku even though it was not provided in the law at the time.

“This situation came about because the Malays are generous and prepared to dilute their power, and this is very different from what happened in Sabah because they had the right to have citizenships,” he added when asked to comment on the criticisms against him regarding the granting of citizenship to immigrants in Sabah.

Dubbed as the “Project IC”, the Sabah matter was currently the subject of scrutiny by a RCI.

Meanwhile, Barathidasan also criticised Mahathir for taking a racial slant since his retirement and churning out incendiary comments regarding the non-Malays.

“The former premier should first clear the air over the rumour that he pursued a medical degree under the Indian quota back then,” he said, referring to Mahathir’s Indian roots.

Barathidasan said MIPAS together with several other groups would stage a protest against Mahathir tomorrow at Brickfields around noon and urged the public to join in.