KUALA LUMPUR, July 14 — PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s accusation that DAP was chauvinistic was remarkably similar to claims made by Umno that supposedly rivals the Islamist party, DAP’s Lim Kit Siang said today.

Questioning why Hadi was taking the position of a rival party, the Gelang Patah MP also asked if the PAS president comprehended the meaning of the term he was using against the DAP for seeking to restore local council elections.

“I am amazed as to why the head of a political party which rivals Umno, is parroting the line of Umno propagandists and cybertroopers who had been accusing the DAP of being ‘chauvinistic’.

“One would expect more originality and even creativity from Hadi!” said Lim in a statement here today.

Hadi reportedly called the DAP “chauvinists” for trying to restore local council elections and said his Islamist party had ended its alliance with the secular party to reject chauvinism.

Hadi said that DAP had gone overboard in its attempt to revive the third vote and the secular party’s purported focus on targeting only urban Chinese voters in Sarawak and not caring that Islam was the country’s religion and that its majority population was Malays.

Lim today said that the two parties ended their alliance because of PAS’s repeated violation of the Pakatan Rakyat Common Policy Framework and Hadi’s desire to exercise veto power over the pact’s decision.

“However, this cannot justify Hadi resorting to the politics of dishonesty and falsehood which are the basis of these allegations,” he said.

The DAP parliamentary leader then asked if Hadi considered all proponents of local government elections to be “chauvinists”, and pointed out that these included Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Turkey and Iran.