KUALA LUMPUR, April 18 — Khairy Jamaluddin criticised his Umno party today for excusing Kemayan assemblyman Mohd Fadli Osman’s description of Chinese and Tamil school students as "foreigners”.

The former Umno Youth chief also expressed his unhappiness over party secretary-general Tan Sri Annuar Musa’s reported remark that the comment was simply Fadil’s personal opinion and did not represent the party’s views.

"Umno can no longer use ‘personal opinion’ as an excuse when our leaders/elected representatives make racist remarks. They must at least be officially reprimanded by the supreme council if not punished accordingly.

"Don’t let one bad apple spoil the entire bunch,” he wrote on Twitter.

Separately, MCA Youth chief Nicole Wong also criticised Fadil over the "racist” remark, saying it was undoing her party’s work to win back public support for Barisan Nasional.

Saying she was a product of Chinese vernacular schools, she rejected the Umno representatives categorisation of such students’ behaviour as similar to "immigrants” and cited her own ability to mingle freely with Malaysians of all races.

"We demand Mohd Fadil to retract his statement and also publicly apologize to the whole Malaysian.

"It's such a disgrace to have him in BN,” she wrote on Twitter.

According to a Malaysiakini report, Fadli called students from Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools "foreigners” during the Tuesday sitting of the Pahang state assembly.