KUALA LUMPUR, March 7 ― DAP National Political Education Director Liew Chin Tong today claimed the newly forged Umno-PAS and MCA-MIC political pacts aimed to make Malaysia “ungovernable” for Pakatan Harapan (PH).
Liew said this was because the popularly elected government will then have to deal with angry ethnic fires fanned from both the Malay front and the non-Malay side as demands from both will be contradictory, hostile and explosive.
“The objective of such “flank attack” is to make both Malays and non-Malays feel aggravated and deprived. Everything will be framed in racial binary terms.
“The marriage of Umno and PAS now allows this new racial pact to paint everything bad against Malaysians who are neither Malays nor Muslims and they no longer need to pretend to be centrist since MCA and MIC are allegedly no longer their officially allies; and vice versa.
“In this setting, there is no way that PH can “out-Malay” Umno, “out-Islam” PAS, “out-Chinese” MCA and “out-Indian” MIC,” he said in a statement here.
Yesterday Liew had claimed on Twitter that the newly forged political pacts were a racially-motivated tactic to drive a wedge within Pakatan Harapan.
The deputy defence minister called it a “scorched earth” strategy where Umno-PAS will take on the ruling coalition for the Malay votes, while MCA-MIC will attack from the “flanks” by aiming for the Pakatan’s minority base.
“Scorched earth” policy refers to a strategy of deliberately destroying everything in an attempt to win at all costs.
However Liew pointed out that there is still hope in this politics of darkness with PH needed to emerge as a people’s movement in order for Malaysia Baharu to succeed.
“For Malaysians who believe that Malaysia does not need to be torn apart racially, we must stand together and we must form a movement to counter the divisive and racial “movement strategy” of Umno-PAS and MCA-MIC.
“Both the Umno-PAS and MCA-MIC pacts stand for spreading racial fires.
“The Pakatan Harapan movement represents peace, spiritual strength, religious tolerance, prosperity, upward mobility and progress for all,” he said.
On Tuesday, Umno announced it had formalised ties with PAS, cementing a loose political co-operation that began right after the latter left Pakatan Rakyat in 2015.
This comes just days after MCA and MIC said they were forced to seek a new alliance after Umno failed to reprimand its supreme council member, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, for making racist remarks.
Yesterday, Nazri, who is Barisan Nasional (BN) secretary-general, said the formalisation of the union between PAS and Umno yesterday means the end of the spirit of BN.
