KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 4 — Malaysia will soon go the way of Greece with fascism slowly creeping into government rule if Barisan Nasional (BN) does not openly denounce Malay right-wingers like Perkasa, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim warned today.
The former Umno Cabinet minister pointed out that in difficult times, “fascists will offer easy solutions” out of difficult situations, easily attracting the young and the disenfranchised to blame others for their lot in life.
“The PM has not publicly denounced Perkasa and everyday his government and his men are mocked and ridiculed by Utusan and Co,” he said, as he continued his recent tirade against the controversial Malay rights group.
“When will he learn that the country will be like Greece in the not-too-distant future; where the fascist party now has 18 seats in Parliament,” Zaid added.
He was referring to the Golden Dawn political party in Greece, a far-right radical party said to be neo-Nazi inspired that won 18 of 300 seats in Greek’s Parliament in its 2012 election.
The maverick politician insisted that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has to take a stand on Perkasa, saying the prime minister “owes” it to Malaysians to explain his thoughts on the group.
“The PM must either believe that majority Malays are moderate and sensible or he thinks they are the clones of Ibrahim Ali. He has to decide,” he said.
Zaid recently took to his blog to call on Najib to denounce Perkasa, a request he laced with a warning and a reminder to the prime minister of Europe’s “mistake” during the German Nazi era which had taken a world war to correct.
In a posting here, the former Umno man picked apart the Malay rights group’s “lunatic” and “toxic ideas” and called them a “threat to security”, saying the government needs to stop allowing the Malay rights group to run amok.
“The issues this group champions are just plain ridiculous, and there is nothing in Perkasa’s struggle that merits serious consideration,” wrote the former de facto law minister.
“It has continued to cause consternation and fear among both Malaysians and also potential investors, and the Prime Minister should categorically denounce Perkasa and its allies for its disruptive politics and warmongering.”
Zaid also urged Putrajaya to not give the group leeway in furthering their causes, even if it has a renowned patron, referring to former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
In response, the group’s president Datuk Ibrahim Ali shrugged off the salvo and instead, thanked Zaid for giving Perkasa “recognition”.
He even said the comparison made of Perkasa and the Nazis by Zaid was amusing, but only went to show that the latter was letting his emotions rule his head.
“When I read his statement, calling Perkasa as Nazi (sic), I never laughed so hard,” he told The Malay Mail Online when contacted.
“It shows that he is not rational anymore, he’s being too emotional... this is big recognition for Perkasa. I consider it world recognition, so I must say thank you to Zaid for giving huge publicity to Perkasa,” he added with a laugh.
Perkasa has often been dismissed by critics as a fringe group and not an embodiment of the largely moderate Malays, but against all odds, the group has muscled its way front and centre into political significance in a divided country, in much the same way as the conservative Tea Party movement has taken hold in the United States.
And just as Tea Party activism has hijacked and forced the Republican Party in the US to tack right, political observers and analysts note that Perkasa also has a similar hold on Umno, the ruling Barisan Nasional’s (BN) lynchpin.
In a report on The Malay Mail Online today, Wan Saiful Wan Jan, chief executive of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) libertarian think-tank, said that Perkasa’s views likely did not represent the majority of Malays.
But he admitted Perkasa had grown in strength to be the most vocal group due to Umno’s dependence on support from the Malay rights group’s members.
Dr Lim Teck Ghee, director of the Centre for Policy Initiatives, took an even more critical view of Perkasa, comparing it to the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist movement in the US.
He said that the rise of Malay right-wing groups like Perkasa and Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (ISMA) mirrored the growth of the white supremacist organisation in the US in the 1920s.
But noted that the difference was that Perkasa is sanctioned by Umno, unlike the outlawed KKK in the US.
The Tea Party movement is a loose American political group that generally supports the right-wing Republican Party and favours small governments, but differs from libertarians in social issues by promoting anti-abortion and anti-gay Christian conservative views, according to a Pew report quoted by the examiner.com news website in 2011.
The KKK, on the other hand, is a hate group that is on the decline since its membership of millions in the 1920s dwindled to between 3,000 and 5,000 currently, according to the Slate news website in 2012.
The Klan has a history of violence from the 1950s, at the start of the civil rights movement in the US, right until the 1980s, as Klansmen lynched African Americans and bombed activists’ homes.
