Anwar torches the myth of Kit Siang’s Malay phobia

 

From Terence Netto

Just as victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan, lies have a myriad of manufacturers while truth is a waif.

Is DAP’s just-retired leader Lim Kit Siang a Malay-phobe? His critics have not been able to produce a shred of evidence of this. But a lack of evidence hasn’t stopped his detractors from keeping up, over the years, their tirades that he is anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-royal.

Never mind if this barrage was sustained by detractors from the nether regions of the political spectrum.

But when vitriol is spewed by people who are from the upper crust of society, it’s a troubling reminder that democratic freedoms are not an unalloyed good.

Former inspector-general of police Hanif Omar recently settled out of court with Lim after the latter sued him for defamation over allegations made by Hanif that the DAP leader had made statements calling for the territorial dismemberment of the country.

Settling out of court meant the case could not proceed to a full judicial airing which would have informed public opinion about the origins and spread of outlandish allegations against Lim.

So, it came as a welcome antidote to the bilge about Lim being Malay-phobic when Anwar Ibrahim took that canard by the horns and shredded it at a dinner to pay tribute to the DAP stalwart in Petaling Jaya last Friday.

Anwar is the most consequential Malaysian politician of the last quarter century because of a singular datum: he was chiefly responsible for the opposition’s denial of Umno-BN’s parliamentary supermajority in March 2008.

This liberated Malaysian politics from bondage to a stifling orthodoxy, that only Umno-BN could rule the country, and that its invincibility isn’t a myth.

Last Friday, the destroyer of this myth proceeded to demolish another: that Lim was an enemy of the Malays.

Anwar said Lim was more an educator of the Malays concerning the rights of Malaysians than he was a menace to their status.

The PKR supremo noted that unlike some Malay leaders, Lim was free of disparaging references to the Malays as ingrates and idlers; instead, the DAP founder had acknowledged that Malays do work hard.

In other words, Anwar was saying that Lim had not condescended to, nor condemned, the Malays.

In sum, Lim’s attitude is composed of the egalitarianism that is consistent with DAP’s Malaysian Malaysia ideology, an idea that is, unfortunately, anathema to many in the Malay community.

The fable of Lim’s Malay phobia is not about to evanesce from Anwar’s incineration of it, but he has gone a good distance to making it unsustainable. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.