Calls to ‘vote for your own kind’ will deepen divide, says Karim

 The PBB information chief says peninsula parties representing the Malay and Chinese communities have fuelled an increasingly fragmented society.

Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah said Sarawakians ‘do not place so much emphasis on religion or race’ but care for unity of the people, their well-being and development.

PETALING JAYA:

Calls for the public to vote along communal lines risk deepening social divides rather than fostering national unity, says Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu information chief Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah.

Citing the political landscape in Peninsular Malaysia, Karim said parties representing the Malay and Chinese communities have fuelled an increasingly fragmented society.

He said that in the run-up to the Negeri Sembilan state election, Malays were told to back Malay candidates and Malay-based parties. Such tactics would “exacerbate existing fault lines across communities”, Dayak Daily quoted him as saying.

“If politics has reached that stage, I do not think it will lead to anything good. It will not lead towards unity,” he was quoted as saying.

He held up as a model Sarawak’s governance which prioritises bringing its multiracial population together while driving socio-economic progress across the region. “In Sarawak, we do not place so much emphasis on religion or race. What matters more is the unity of the people, their well-being and development”.

The exploitation of identity politics was blamed for Pakatan Harapan’s defeat at the Negeri Sembilan polls. PH election director Amirudin Shari said in August that there was a lot of racial rhetoric leading up to the polls that caused unease among Malays and non-Malays.

Prior to the Negeri Sembilan state election, think tank Ilham Centre predicted that the alliance of Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional would receive greater Malay support than what BN garnered in the Johor polls the previous month, largely due to the use of identity politics on the campaign trail. - FMT