His arrival at the Chinese-majority Labis Tengah polling district was announced by DAP Serdang MP Teo Nie Ching, who thanked Nik Aziz for defending her when she came under attack for visiting a mosque.
“The choice is very simple here, vote for Cikgu Normala,” said Nik Aziz, referring to the PAS candidate Normala Sudirman.
Both PAS and the DAP have been forced to be on a defensive mode as the Barisan Nasional (BN) campaign, through its second-largest party MCA, has been harping on the Islamist party’s agenda to form an Islamic state.
Even Normala’s refusal to shake hands with men was turned into a major campaign issue by MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, claiming that her practice is not acceptable to the Chinese community.
Dr Chua had also warned Tenang voters against voting for PAS, saying that it would only further strengthen the party in PR and pave the way for the formation of an Islamic state.
Nik Aziz attempted to dismiss Dr Chua’s fear mongering tactic, saying that PAS had in the past faced worse accusations in election campaigns.
“In Kelantan, some people used to say when PAS comes to power everyone will be circumcised. I was angry when I heard this, we are all one, we came from Adam before we were divided by race,” he told some 200 people who gathered outside the DAP operations centre here last night.
Nik Aziz also pointed out that PAS, which has been in power in Kelantan since 1990, has taken steps to improve race relation in the east coast state.
“In Kelantan, we did a lot of things to unite the people, we built a mosque in Rantau Panjang that was designed after a Chinese mosque in Beijing. We did that to ease the tension between the Malays and the Chinese,” said Nik Aziz.
“A few months ago, the state government organised the Cheng Ho Expo. He was a Chinese Muslim who came to Malacca.
“Our objective was to instil the spirit of unity among the Malays and Chinese,” he added. - Malaysian Insider
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.