FEBRUARY 7 — With Ismail Sabri recalcitrantly refusing to apologise for his boycott statement, he has become a much abhorred racist among Chinese Malaysians. Nevertheless, there are many in the Malay community that supports his call to boycott Chinese traders, and uphold him as a hero.

Penang Umno, for instance, has openly expressed its support for the agriculture minister, along with many incumbent and past leaders from the party’s Youth wing.

The controversy will only gain in momentum without the intervention from those high up in power. It is only a matter of time that such a war of words will eventually develop into racial prejudices, discrimination and even confrontation.

Perhaps lsmail Sabri and his supportive Penang Umno and Umno Youth folks have forgotten that as a cabinet minister, he serves all the people in this country and not just a particular ethnic community. He should not have associated inflationary pressure with any particular race, and called for Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses.

As the agriculture and agro-based industry.minister, Ismail Sabri should run his department properly while also monitoring the production, sales and pricing of agricultural products in the country. In addition, he also had responsibility to play a positive role in bringing about national harmony and unity.

I am personally not very familiar with agriculture or agro-based industries, so I am in no position to draw a conclusion whether Ismail Sabri has done his job well as a minister in charge of that portfolio. But or his latter role to promote national harmony, I can say for sure he flunks badly, and this is not the first time he has come up with sensitive racist statements.

Prejudices will only breed discrimination, and discrimination animosity. Now that Pandora’s box is opened, uncontrollable prejudices, discrimination and hatred have been released. If these evil elements are allowed to roam freely in our midst, it will be hard to imagine how horrendous the eventuality could turn out to be.

To make things worse, Ismail so far has shown no remorse over his action. As if that is not enough, he has even said menacingly that he would apply pressure on Chinese traders to reduce their prices on behalf of the “majority voices” of the Malays.

He has refused to retract his statement or apologise, and sure enough he has never thought he has done anything wrong.

Penang Umno even said Ismail Sabri used to be the domestic trade minister and should therefore know who manipulated goods prices.

But is this the real thing?

The government has already drafted an act to strictly monitor and control the prices of daily necessities. I believe our minister should be well aware of this fact.

Indeed fuel prices have come down over the past few months but goods prices remain stubbornly high, which is also true, and which has nothing at all to do with race. The minister should not have drawn baseless conclusions from the reports delivered to his air-conditioned office. Instead, he should go down to the field and see which among the hypermarkets, high-end cafes, mamak stalls and roadside hawker stalls have reduced their prices.

None of them! And what about toll rates, water and utility rates, car prices?

And since no one seems to lower his prices, then why should Ismail Sabri call for Malay consumers to boycott only Chinese traders and not all businesses, consortia including large GLCs which are reluctant to reduce their prices?

He only knows how to point his finger at Chinese traders without trying to understand the dilemma faced by many Chinese businesses. If this is not a prejudice and discrimination, then I have no idea what it should be called.

This is not the first time Ismail Sabri has targeted his firepower specifically at the Chinese community. I am not sure whether there is problem with his mentality and attitude, or that he has some hidden agenda behind his discriminatory move.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.