Is DAP as bigoted as Umno and PAS?

 

From Terence Netto

DAP is as bigoted as Umno and PAS if it’s true what Penang MCA chairman Tan Teik Cheng says about his party’s nemesis.

Tan said DAP is stoking fears among Chinese voters in Penang that if they don’t vote for DAP in the fast-approaching GE15 they risk winding up with having a Malay as chief minister.

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He denounced this campaign as “vicious and irresponsible”, arguing that it is a political convention of the state that the chief minister’s post is held by a Chinese.

DAP has long griped about Umno’s whispering campaign that DAP is anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-royal. No substantive proof has been adduced to convict DAP of this triad of anathemas.

Recently, DAP led the campaign of lodging multiple police reports against the patently racist view of PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang that in Malaysia corruption is a non-Malay
phenomenon.

Police have called up Hadi for questioning but charges against him are yet to be preferred.

Hadi said he will reply to the charge of him being anti-non-Malay if and when he is charged in court, which he is virtually saying he expects not to be charged.

DAP has done well over the years to fend off accusations that it is hostile to Malays, Islam and the royals.

And it did well to lead the campaign to have Hadi carpeted for his asinine claim about non-Malay responsibility for corruption.

After battling bigotry for years, one would think DAP would refrain from stooping to commit it, as the Penang MCA leader claims they have done in the campaign that has unofficially begun for GE15.

DAP ought to waste no time in disavowing the MCA claim, even if some of the party’s lesser lights in Penang have been campaigning along the racist lines attributed to them by
MCA.

The evolution of its “Malaysian Malaysia” ideology ought to have enabled DAP to arrive, more than a half-century since the party’s formation, at the point when they could argue
that individual capability rather than ethnicity should be the major point about who is to be Penang’s chief minister.

That may be too idealistic an expectation to have about DAP, but it’s certainly not too much to expect that it refrains from stoking fear over the possibility of a Malay chief minister for Penang, stemming from an Umno-BN victory in the coming polls.

DAP should not stoop to this baseness, particularly when racial and religious bigotry are keeping this country from attaining the excellence that the party’s inspiration, Lim Kit
Siang, constantly reminds a nation at the confluence of the Malay, Chinese and Indian civilisations, to strive for.

DAP must not allow the base instincts of its lesser lights to mar the better visions of its recently deceased founding chairman Chen Man Hin’s spirit. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and FMT reader.

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