KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 18 — MCA Youth today urged Chinese traders to disregard Mohd Ali Baharom’s suggestion to put them through training, saying the armed forces veteran’s comment and his apparent propensity for blaming the minority community for all cheating cases deserves no recognition.
In a statement, MCA Youth chairman Senator Chong Sin Woon told Mohd Ali, who is more popularly known as “Ali Tinju”, that cheating does not only involve Chinese traders but trades of all ethnicity.
“MCA Youth urges the public, in particular the Chinese community who are handphone traders to ignore the bigoted racially-charged exhortation by Armed Forces Veterans Association president Mohd Ali Baharom,” he said.
“His slurs are not only provocative but he has once again racially profiled the entire Chinese community.
“His remarks are crude and not beneficial towards healing the wounds from the Low Yat Plaza fracas in July this year, but are designed towards stirring discord, distrust and prejudice against all Malaysian Chinese in general,” he added.
Chong said that it would be more helpful if Ali Tinju had chosen instead to urge the government to encourage handphone traders to attend marketing or English-language courses to enhance their competitiveness.
He also told Ali Tinju that all handphone traders are guided by a recommended retail price by the brands that they stock.
“If the handphone traders sell an item way below the recommended retail price, he may be suspected and accused of selling an imitation or faulty product.
“Simultaneously, the supplier may also halt supplying the equipment to the trader to sell, and the trader would thus have fewer marketable products to offer,” he said.
Chong added that although there may be a few “bad apples” among traders who try to take advantage of non-tech savvy customers, this is not confined to just the Chinese traders.
Earlier today at a small protest outside Kotaraya, Ali Tinju urged Putrajaya to send Chinese handphone traders for training to teach them how to stop cheating.
The army veteran also urged for a year-long boycott of the businesses run by some allegedly unscrupulous traders in Kotaraya, saying it would teach them a lesson cheating their customers.
Ali Tinju organised the protest today following a report of a man who was allegedly confined in a small room for several hours after he refused to pay RM10,000 for four phones from a Kotaraya trader.
The report in the Siakapkeli blog did not, however, specify if the trader in question was of Chinese descent.
Ali Tinju was previously investigated for sedition over remarks he made ahead of the Low Yat Plaza riots in July, which was triggered by a false rumour that a Malay youth was cheated by Chinese traders.
The Attorney-General’s Chambers did not, however, file charges.
