Rafidah: Razak will 'turn in his grave' if...

Former prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein would turn in his grave on the current situation of the country, former Umno minister Rafidah Aziz said today.

"I always say, Tun Razak will actually turn in his grave if he knew this is what is happening to this country at this point in time," Rafidah said at a special commemorative seminar on Razak in conjunction with his 40th death anniversary in Kuala Lumpur.

Specifically, she lamented how the issue of education has become politicised in the country.

"He (Razak) never thought that education should be so narrowly interpreted as to be only Malay.

"To hell with the rest of the languages of the world. No, he never spoke that way," she said.

Even in the Umno supreme council meetings back then, she pointed out, they all spoke in English.

Not because they were putting English on a pedestal, she explained, but because they knew it was the best way to communicate as they were all English-educated then.

Rafidah (photo) also stressed that "petty fractionalism" would be bad for everyone in the country.

'Examine broken parts of the system'

Instead, she said, the system should be examined as it is broken.

"There are some parts of the system that are broken, let's not deny it," she said.

The people of Malaysia should be united and "not fractious" so that Malaysia can become resilient and strong in the face of global competition.

"We should go back to Tun Razak's politics of development and equitable redistribution.

"We should go back to putting national interests first, before political or party interests," Rafidah said to some applause from the crowd.

Razak would have loved that Malaysia is on the verge of attaining the status of a developed nation, she mused.

However, she said, the nation should also strive to have a "first world mindset" to go along with the first world status Malaysia is trying to achieve by 2020. -Mkini