Zul Noordin’s nomination ‘hurtful’ to Indians, says PKR veep

KUALA LUMPUR, April 16 — The nomination of Perkasa vice-president Datuk Zulkifli Noordin for the Shah Alam seat shows that the extreme conservative faction in Umno has gained the upper hand, PKR vice-president N. Surendran said today.

This comes as Barisan Nasional (BN) chief Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced today that Islamic hardliner Zulkifli will contest directly under the coalition ticket in the May 5 polls, a move apparently aimed at tapping the predominantly conservative Malay electorate.

“The decision to field Zulkifli Noordin is particularly hurtful to the Indian community, whom he had insulted and whose religion he had publicly mocked,” Surendran(picture) said in a press statement.

The incumbent lawmaker for Kulim-Bandar Baharu in Kedah has stirred up much anger among Malaysia’s religious and racial minority with his politically incorrect remarks that have also been recorded on video and gone viral.

The latest captured him uttering the word “Keling”, which Indian Malaysians find racially offensive, just days after another video clip of him delivering a religious lecture in which he questioned an Indian trader on why Hindu gods did not prevent the man’s shop from being flooded, drawing the wrath of Hindus. 

Zulkifli also questioned the purity of the Ganges River, also known as Ganga in India, which is considered sacred by Hindus.

Surendran accused BN of protecting Zulkifli, who he claimed was not charged by either the police or the Attorney-General despite his remarks constituting offences under section 298A of the Penal Code. 

Shah Alam’s religious minority also took issue with right-wing Malay groups after the latter dragged a bloodied cow head to the state secretariat building in August 2008 to protest the state PR government’s decision to shift a Hindu temple into a Malay-majority residential neighbourhood.

Religion and race are inseparable subjects in Southeast Asia’s third-biggest economy, which prescribes that Malays must also be Muslim.

Zulkifli became a BN-friendly independent MP critical of the opposition when he was dismissed from PKR on March 6, 2010 over a police report he lodged against PAS’s Khalid Samad, whom he will be battling for the Shah Alam vote.