SHAH ALAM, Aug 8 — Barisan Nasional (BN) can win back eroding support from Malaysia’s minorities if Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak just tries harder to reach out to all communities, his PKR political foe Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim (picture) said today.
Khalid disagreed with Singapore’s influential statesman Lee Kuan Yew, who had remarked in a new book that Najib will not be able to regain the support of the Chinese and Indian electorate without losing support from the Malay ground.
“I dispute his hypothesis,” the second-term Selangor mentri besar told a news conference at his Hari Raya Aidilfitri open house celebration here.
“If that is true, then there will be no situation where a nation of a multiracial composition can be together,” the PKR treasurer-general said.
In Lee's latest book out since Tuesday, “One Man’s View of The World”, the Singapore founding father had suggested that Malaysia’s sixth prime minister was ambitious to seek to reconcile its increasingly polarised multiracial population but the existing political reality was far from conducive for him to do so.
“It is impossible for him to win votes from the Chinese and Indians without losing votes from his party’s core supporters — the Malays,” said Lee, who helmed the island republic for three decades and is also father to its current prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.
"For example, if Najib were to solve rural-based [problems] including the estate workers, and all those, I am sure Najib will get the support of [even] the Malays, and the Chinese," the 66-year-old said.
But Khalid surprisingly agreed with Lee that Pakatan Rakyat will not be able to do away with Malay supremacy, saying that it was inevitable to pay more attention to the Malays as they are the majority in the country.
"I think he is telling the truth because if 60 per cent of the population of this country are Malays, [so] the political inclination will be trying to get the support of the Malays," Khalid said.
The Port Klang assemblyman added that if Lee was cynical of the practice, however, he had wrongly assumed that they ignored democracy along the way.
"I'm quite sure if Singapore is handled by the opposition, [they] will also have the same inclination for the Chinese [majority] to be quite supportive, if not nobody can win.
"The reality of it is that we must accept the fact that the structure of that is race based but how you are going to translate it to equality to all is a different matter," Khalid said.
