DAP attacks Dr M’s ‘classic perverse illogic’

'He is capable of telling lies and defending sedition and even treason,' says Kit Siang.

KUALA LUMPUR: DAP leader Lim Kit Siang today launched a scathing attack against former premier Mahathir Mohamad, saying he was using his “classic perverse illogic” to defend Perkasa chief Ibrahim Ali’s Bible-burning call.

Lim said it was unbecoming of Mahathir as an elder statesman to defend “irresponsible, extremist and incendiary misdeeds” when he should be counseling for “peace, unity and harmony”.

Mahathir said yesterday that Ibrahim had good intentions when he made his controversial call in Penang last January. The former PM was speaking in the context of the Muslim practice of discarding unusable copies of the Quran by burning to protect them from desecration.

Lim contended that Ibrahim had no good intentions even in that context.

“A check of the news archives in January last year provides proof that Ibrahim was exhorting Muslims to ‘unite to protect their religion’ and to ‘seize and burn’ Bibles,” he said in a press statement.

Lim said Mahathir’s defence of Ibrahim was only the latest illustration of his tendency to speak or act as if the end justifies the means.

“He is capable of telling lies and defending sedition and even treason,” he said.

“Mahathir for instance told a pack of lies in the campaign for the 13th General Elections in May 2013 when he said that I was contesting in Gelang Patah to cause a racial confrontation between the Chinese and Malays and that I wanted the Chinese to hate the Malays and reject working with the Malays.

“Didn’t Mahathir commit treason when he was Prime Minister and approved the Project IC or Project M to swamp Sabah with illegal immigrants with ‘citizenship-for-votes’ scams to subvert the electoral process and undermine the sovereignty of Sabah and Malaysia?”

He also accused Mahathir of being responsible for a host of afflictions that have beset the country, giving the following examples:

• The infamy of the Operation Lalang mass arrests under the Internal Security Act in 1987;
• Subversion of a truly independent judiciary and a just rule of law;
• Lack of national and international confidence in the efficiency, quality, professionalism and integrity of key national institutions, whether the Police, Elections Commission or the anti-corruption agency;
• Degradation of a world-quality educational system – primary, secondary and tertiary; and
• Rampant corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in high political places.