Act like a proper ‘elder statesman’, Dr M told

KUALA LUMPUR, April 9 – Tun Dr Mahathir should quit his racial-baiting and act like a responsible elder statesman befitting his role as former prime minister in the run-up to Election 2013, political rival Lim Kit Siang advised today.

The DAP’s Lim has been bearing the brunt of Dr Mahathir’s attacks ever since announcing his plan to take the electoral battle right to the Barisan Nasional’s (BN) fortress in Johor, which is the birthplace of its anchor party Umno and the last standing home of Chinese partner, MCA.

“Mahathir should be a responsible ‘elder statesman’ and stop race-baiting and inciting communal sentiments which is completely antithetical to his concept of Bangsa Malaysia in Vision 2020,” Lim said in a statement, referring to his former political foe’s twin legacies for the birth of a united, multicultural people when the country has achieved developed-nation status.

The opposition leader who had been once been Dr Mahathir’s top parliamentary adversary in the 1990s said the 87-year-old was within his rights to go all out in campaigning for the ruling BN.

But Lim told Dr Mahathir to drop his “wild, baseless, irresponsible and racist allegation” that his move to the Gelang Patah federal seat in Johor was to “create racial disharmony among Malays and Chinese” and to capitalise on the potential conflict between the two races to win the election.

“It is most unworthy of the fourth Prime Minister of 22 years to make such a wild, baseless, irresponsible and racist allegation,” the Ipoh-Timor MP(picture) said.

“I had said publicly in the DAP ceramahs in Gelang Patah that I want to win in Gelang Patah, not just on Chinese votes but also on Malay and Indian votes as well,” he added.

The 72-year-old Lim reminded that he had urged constituents in Gelang Patah to vote “as Malaysians” to realise the dream first voiced by Umno’s founder and first president Datuk Onn Jaafar prior to the country’s Independence from colonial British rule 61 years ago.

“Although Onn was too ahead of his time, the Malaysian Dream remains alive in the hearts and minds of Malaysians down the decades,” he said.

Dr Mahathir has become the BN’s de facto campaigner-in-chief in the weeks leading up to the 13th general elections, going on the stump with the vigour of a much younger man as the ruling coalition faces what is seen as its stiffest challenge ever from the opposition Pakatan Rakyat pact.