Like us or not we helped BN win GE13, Perkasa tells Najib

Members of Perkasa hold a rally outside the Court of Appeal in Putrajaya on October 14, 2013 before the court ruling on the ‘Allah’ appeal. — Picture by Saw Siow FengKUALA LUMPUR, Oct 27 — Whether or not Datuk Seri Najib Razak agrees with Perkasa’s views, he must admit it had helped keep his Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition in power, the Malay rights group has claimed, while accusing Chinese voters of betraying the prime minister.

Its youth chief Irwan Fahmi Ideris said Perkasa’s politics had aided the return of Malay support towards the ruling party, adding that it had done more work than BN’s non-Malay component allies in garnering votes.

Yesterday, outgoing Gerakan acting president Datuk Chong Ko Youn claimed Najib opposed Perkasa’s extreme politics despite not making his stance public, saying this had been conveyed to the party’s leadership behind closed doors.

“Whether he likes us or not, Perkasa had contributed to BN’s victory,” he told The Malay Mail Online.

The rise of Perkasa, championed by its patron Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, has pushed Najib’s Umno to tack right in recent years, hurting BN’s hold on middle Malaysia.

This has come at a heavy cost for BN’s non-Malay parties in the peninsula, with both Gerakan and MCA performing disastrously in Election 2013.

Umno has, however, kept the support of its conservative base, while the ruling coalition stayed in power even though it lost the popular vote.

Perkasa’s Irwan blasted Chong for the statement, saying the Gerakan leader was only grandstanding to his party’s grassroots in a bid to conceal the leadership’s failure to win Chinese support in the national polls.

“And whether or not he (Najib) likes us is a second question, the main issue is what have they (Gerakan) done to win Chinese support?

“Cakap orang kalah kita tak nak dengarlah (we shouldn’t bother with the words of a loser),” he said.

Irwan also accused Gerakan and MCA, BN’s main Chinese party of laziness, saying they had only “makan gaji buta (been paid for doing little or no work)” when given allocations to campaign for Chinese support in the last two elections.

“At least we contributed to BN’s victory. They? Just ‘makan gaji buta’ as you can see the Chinese didn’t even back them”.

Irwan had also blamed the Chinese voters for BN’s record losses and accused them of betraying the prime minister.

He pointed out that Najib had done much for the community in the run-up to the May 5 polls but his gesture was not reciprocated.

“Najib had done so many things for this community but it has been proven that this race had betrayed (him)”.

Training his guns back on Chong, Irwan then said Gerakan should focus on winning Penang back and restoring Chinese support for BN before making such statements.

When asked to comment on Gerakan’s allegations that Perkasa is the chief cause behind the waning Chinese support for the government, Irwan shot down the accusation.

“Perkasa only came after 2008. By then, the Chinese already supported the opposition. So what does this mean? It means they have not been doing their job. Don’t try to blame Perkasa,” he said.

According to Chong, in all of the party’s “dealings” with Najib, the prime minister has repeatedly expressed his opposition to Perkasa’s communal agenda despite not making the stand public.

“I’m not sure about criticising but in all of our dealings with the PM, he definitely doesn’t share their (Perkasa) will,” Chang told a press conference after opening Gerakan’s congress here when asked what he felt about the government’s muted response to some of Perkasa’s extreme actions.

- malaymail