Pakatan manifesto for all, not just Indians says Rafizi

PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli is unapologetic that the Pakatan Rakyat Manifesto makes no specific mention of Indian Malaysians, despite the brickbats from the community. 

Instead, he echoed his party's de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim's statement on Tuesday that the manifesto is meant to transcend racial boundaries.

"We took a lot of brickbats, correct... I am not apologetic at all and as a key member of the manifesto committee, I stand firm, " he said.

He said that being serious about reform and remaking the whole country beyond the racial line, as a reform coalition, Pakatan cannot write its manifesto along those lines.

Rafizi (right) added that promising different groups different prescriptions was a no no because society shared the same problems.

" What makes the Indians poor is also precisely what makes the Malay or the Chinese poor," he said.

Extolling virtues of BN party
Rafizi was debating MCA vice president Gan Ping Siew in Kuala Lumpur last night on "The Future of My Party" theme, in which both acknowledged that policies should transcend racial boundaries.

However, Gan (left)maintained that MCA is still relevant as a mono-ethnic party, pointing to the fact that the party has won some 80,000 new members, whereas only close to 900 have resigned.

In addition, he said the party has been able to influence the national decision-making process, especially under Najib Abdul Razak's premiership, unlike the "strongman politics" of his predecessor Dr Mahathir Mohamed's.

Nevertheless, Gan, who is also a senator and youth and sports deputy minister, said MCA needs to be more vocal in articulating its position on national issues that it stands for or it would be seen as a party based on communal interests and social work.

"MCA should not be seen as merely advocating communal issues; that is wrong. The communal issue are part of national issues.

"Therefore we must advocate and campaign. The way forward is to look at the wider national interest -communal issues and social issues as they are part of the national interest - and make very clear what we stand for," he said.