KUALA LUMPUR, April 10 ― Barisan Nasional (BN) lynchpin Umno should focus on fixing its battered image among Malaysia’s sizeable non-Malay voters instead of playing with “disastrous” racial politics that nearly tore the country apart once before, The Economist said in its new weekly edition.
In an article weighing in on Parliament’s passage to strengthen the Sedition Act 1948, the London-based weekly cautioned the ruling Malay party against leaning further to the right with its racial approach in a purported bid to drive in a wedge within the federal opposition.
“By encouraging the Islamists, the government is fanning racial and religious divisions in a majority-Malay (and Muslim) country with large ethnic-Chinese and ethnic-Indian minorities. In 1969 bloody race riots nearly tore Malaysia apart.
“Playing racial politics could be disastrous in this multiracial country. A better and more enlightened way for Mr Najib to boost Umno’s prospects would be for him to repair its image with ethnic Chinese and Indians,” The Economist said, referring to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak who is also Umno president and chairman of the 13-party BN coalition.
In backing its cautionary note, The Economist noted that Putrajaya had opted to strengthen the Sedition Act 1948 with planned “harsher punishments and a clause forbidding speech that denigrates Islam” ― despite Najib’s 2012 promise to abolish the law.
It also said the Sedition Act had already been used to arrest those objecting to the strict Islamic penal code hudud, which opposition Islamist party PAS wants to enforce in Kelantan.
Lawyer Eric Paulsen was recently detained overnight over his criticisms on Twitter against hudud laws.
The Economist also said Malaysia’s allies should bluntly call for a stop to Putrajaya’s encroaching of civil liberties ― with this week’s Sedition Act amendments and with the resurrection of indefinite detention without trial through the new Prevention of Terrorism Act.
“Malaysia’s friends should be blunter about this where they have been mealy-mouthed. They should condemn Malaysia’s corruption, its decaying freedoms and its racial politics. They should call for both the Sedition Act and unlimited detention to go,” the London-based publication said in the scathingly critical piece of the gap between the Najib administration’s liberal image with its use of repressive laws.
In the same piece, The Economist also noted concerns over Malaysia’s human rights record and a “growing scandal” involving debt-ridden state-owned investment firm 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
