Zaid hits out at PAS, says ‘pot calling kettle black’

Former Umno minister tweets against reaction by Islamist party over Nanyang Siang Pau's cartoon, calling them bullies and asking Malaysians to stand up to them.

PETALING JAYA: Zaid Ibrahim says PAS and its leaders have no right to be demanding apologies when they have been offending others for years.

Alluding to the police reports and vitriol directed by the Islamist party and its leaders against Chinese daily Nanyang Siang Pau, the former de facto law minister took to Twitter to voice his disgust.

“PAS has been rude, malicious and offensive to others for years. Do they apologise? Has Hadi Awang apologised for calling some of us kafir,” Zaid tweeted, referring to PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang.

On April 8, the vernacular newspaper and its news portal published a cartoon featuring two monkeys sitting on a tree named “Act 355”. A group of monkeys were seen fighting under the tree.

One of the monkeys on the tree was drawn wearing a “songkok” and labelled “speaker”, while the other had on a “serban” (turban) and was labelled “Hadi Awang”.

The cartoon was published two days after Hadi tabled his private member’s bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 (Act 355).

After the uproar that followed the cartoon being shared on social media, Nanyang made an apology, saying it would remove the cartoon from its news portal.

However, 150 PAS members staged a protest outside the Nanyang office in Petaling Jaya yesterday, calling for more action against the daily, including asking the home ministry to revoke its publishing licence.

Zaid said the Islamist party was being “bullies”, and asked Malaysians to stand up to them.

“Malaysians must stop being afraid of bullies. Just because they use the green label does not mean they are not bullies,” he wrote in another tweet on the issue.

Zaid, who became a DAP member in February, also commended Zunar for coming to the paper’s defence.

“Zunar only fella who sees no reason for Nanyang to apologise. Even Nanyang does not know why they apologised,” Zaid tweeted referring to the popular political cartoonist whose real name is Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque. -FMT