Who started the hatred first?

We wish to refer to an article written recently by the Star associate editor Veera Pandiyan which was published in The Star newspaper on 22 December 2011. The title of the article was "The harnessing of hatred".

According to the editor, the acronym, ABU has long been associated with hate right from the United Kingdom to Malaysia. Besides, the ABU acronym, according to him, also represents many aspects, from education, aviation, broadcasting, medical to automotive.

The subject which brought to our attention is not the whole article itself but on the ABU acronym in Malaysia, which stands for "Asalkan Bukan Umno" or Anything But Umno. ABU in Malaysia was recently launched by an NGO dedicated to reform and according to Veera, this NGO and their activist were well-known for their aversion towards Umno.

Aversion towards Umno? In his article, Veera had also mentioned that it was this NGO who is inciting hate against Umno and its leaders and associating them with corruption and a lots more of other wrongdoings.

So, is that particular NGO wrong? What is the NGO's intention of initiating ABU? Why did ABU surfaced in the first place and what causes ABU to be initiated? What we are trying to rectify here is, why did Veera said that it was the one NGO who has been initiating ABU and to gather people to hate Umno.

Has Veera totally forgotten that it was Umno who had first incited hatred onto us in the beginning? Didn't he realize that it was Umno who started all the hate results when the party's youth wing threatened to burn down a state Chinese Town Hall (association)? Then Umno went on stoking even more hatred when their delegates express their hate and vented their angers on non-bumiputra Malaysians for the loss of their wealth, money, equities and their declining political powers.

Besides, Umno also hated the Indian community where they mobilized a group to protest against the construction of a Hindu temple and they even brought along with them a cow's head to insult the community's religion. Then Umno leaders started to give the Chinese community all sorts of name, from "pendatang", "penduduk sementara" to immigrants and then labelling us as being ungrateful.

Apart from that, these Umno leaders and delegates also blamed us continuously for their loss of wealth, equities and business interests and had on several occasions also vented their angers by issuing threats of violence and attempted harmful revenge onto the Chinese community at large for supporting the opposition parties in the last general elections.

All such actions had indeed reflect Umno as a party which symbolize and idolizing racism, hatred, revenge and violence as their quest to cling on to power at all costs whenever possible.

And talking about corruption in Umno, the Star editor also asked, "when exactly did Umno become associated with corruption?" If he doesn't know or couldn't remember, we are glad to remind him that the corruption was blatantly wide within the Umno's ruling elites (golongan bangsawan)and their local warlords (division chairmen and committees).

Because of all these problems created by and within Umno, ABU (Asalkan Bukan Umno) exist today not by one or two particular race (Chinese or Indian) but by all Malaysians regardless of race or skin colour who all came together to show their solidarity against Umno's racism and various crimes against our people.

ABU does not exist for no reason or nothing, it did not exist for fun nor for the sake of creating any trouble. Had Umno treated the entire nation with fair and just manner, our people would not even think of ABU in the first place.

Therefore, ABU has been officially launched and the campaign shall exist as long as Umno exist and continue to refuse our people the fair, just and equal opportunities and distribution in socio-economy, political and education. ABU shall continue to exist as long as our people's human rights are being continuously deprived by Umno, ABU shall continue to exist as long as there are still blatant corruption, power abuse, mismanagement and brutality in today's Umno dominated governments in the federal and states.

ABU is here today to rally our people for a total change. Go for it ABU!