Zul Noordin fans ‘Chinese tsunami’ row, says DAP behind May 13

KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 — Datuk Zulkifli Noordin raised the spectre of May 13 last night when he accused the DAP and Lim Kit Siang of being behind Malaysia’s worst race riots even as Umno leaders continue to blame last week’s poor election results on a “Chinese tsunami” that was fanned by the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) party.

The controversial Perkasa vice-president, who was a direct Barisan Nasional (BN) losing candidate in Election 2013, made the allegations in a series of tweets sent out on the eve of the 44th anniversary of the riots.

Zulkifli sent out several inflammatory tweets about the May 13, 1969 riots last night. — File pic“Tomorrow is May 13... the 44th anniversary of race riots in Malaysia which was the atrocity of chauvinists including Kit Siang’s party which used the slogan Malai-Seh or Die Malays,” he tweeted late last night.

Lim has frequently been the target of right-wing Malay groups who have singled him out for blame for the riots even though he was not even in Kuala Lumpur when the riots broke out.

But former Umno member Tamrin Ghafar had cleared Lim while on the stump of the Election 2013 campaign trail, saying that Umno itself was behind the riot.

The son of former deputy prime minister Tun Abdul Ghafar Baba said he was told by former home minister, the late Tun Ghazali Shafie, that the May 13 riots were likely the result of an internal Umno coup against founding prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman.

According to police records, 196 people were killed in the riots which were largely clashes between Malay and Chinese groups, following the results of the general election held a few days earlier.

In the 1969 elections, the Alliance coalition of Umno, the MCA and MIC lost the popular vote but won the elections.

In Election 2013, BN, the successor to the Alliance also won the polls but lost the popular vote.

Umno president Datuk Seri Najib Razak suggested a “Chinese tsunami” had caused his BN to record its worst-ever electoral results.

Utusan Malaysia, the newspaper owned by Umno, has also suggested Chinese voters were provoking race tensions by voting against BN, with one headline last week asking the question “Apa lagi Cina mahu? (What else do the Chinese want?)”

The newspaper — seen as being aligned with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad — and other party leaders have consistently argued that votes against the Umno-led BN were akin to voting against the Malays.

This is despite the fact that PR parties PAS and PKR are largely Malay-Muslim in their membership. The DAP also fielded Malay candidates in the elections.

Yesterday, Najib defended his party from accusations of racism, and instead accused the DAP of being racists.

Despite the claims from Umno, analyses of the Election 2013 results point to a urban-rural divide rather than a Malay-Chinese division in the way Malaysians voted last week.

While a majority of Chinese backed PR parties, a significant number of Malay voters also voted for the opposition parties, particularly in urban centres.

Zulkifli, a self-styled champion of Malay-Muslim rights, also suggested in his tweets last night that Malaysians join him in a campaign called “ABCD Asalkan Bukan Cauvinis DAP (Anything But Chauvinists of DAP).”

“Remember May 13. Remember DAP. Remember May 13. Remember Malai-Seh,” he tweeted.

Since the DAP became the target of Umno attacks, it has been backed by its PR partners PKR and PAS which are largely Malay parties.

Yesterday, former Court of Appeal judge Datuk Mohd Noor Abdullah also joined the race debate when he warned the Chinese community to prepare for a backlash from the Malays for their alleged “betrayal” against the ruling BN in Election 2013.

At a forum, the former high-ranking judge reportedly accused the Chinese of plotting to “seize political power” from the Malays, despite already having benefited economically from the “Malay’s hand of friendship”.