By Susan Loone | May 12, 11
Malaysiakini

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng wants the editors and reporters of Utusan Malaysia involved in the DAP-Christian state conspiracy issue to be replaced.

According to Lim, this is the only way Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak can convince Malaysians that Utusan does not enjoy full legal immunity and that Umno, its largest shareholder, diagrees with the newspaper publishing “dangerous lies.

“Najib Razak can also convince Malaysians by directing Utusan Malaysia to withdraw and apologise for the false report and replacing the editors and reporters involved in such dangerous lies that can burn 1Malaysia,” he added.

Lim said Utusan appears to enjoy legal immunity in printing such “evil and malicious lies” because the Malay daily is both owned and working fully under the direction of Umno.

He was referring to a front-page report in the Malay daily on May 7, which alleged that the DAP was colluding with a group of pastors to replace Islam as the official religion of the federation with Christianity and to install a Christian prime minister.

The report was based on unverified sources derived from postings in two pro-Umno blogs.

The DAP and various Christian groups have denied the charges, however, several police reports have been lodged over the matter nationwide in the last few days.

Lim added that National Union of Journalists’ president Hata Wahari had, in an interview with the online Free Malaysia Today revealed that Utusan’s editorial directives were set by Umno’s powerful political bureau.

This bureau reportedly sits every Monday night to discuss the paper’s agenda for the week.

Hata was quoted by online news portal Free Malaysia Today as saying that among those who sit in the meetings are Umno president Najib, his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin, vice-presidents Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Hishamuddin Hussein and Shafie Apdal, secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor and party information chief Ahmad Maslan.

According to Hata, the agenda is then communicated to Utusan’s editor-in-chief via the prime minister’s office.

The paper will then run the issues set out in the agenda for three days before dropping it completely, unless it receives strong public support from top BN ministers, said Hata.

He added that this is a clever strategy because by the third day the other media would have snapped it up to continue milking it, which would leave Utusan free to start the ball rolling on another issue.

“But while most urbanites can see right through Utusan Malaysia’s thinly-veiled propaganda, its rural readership remains staunch believers of the newspaper’s lies,” said Lim (left).

“For that reason, any failure by Najib to act against Utusan will only confirm Hata’s revelation that Utusan’s lies of a Christian conspiracy was sanctioned by Umno to entrench the party’s rural Malay support,” he added.

Lim said DAP also challenges MCA, Gerakan or SUPP Ministers to bring the matter up in cabinet and demand stern action against Utusan.

Should they fail to do so, Lim added, then MCA, Gerakan and SUPP are merely playing a double-faced sandiwara of saying one thing to the non-Malay community in the non-Chinese papers but doing things differently for Malay readership of Utusan.