By Shannon Teoh
June 15, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, June 15 — Umno’s Utusan Malaysia today accused DAP of masterminding PAS’s new welfare state agenda as a cover for its Malaysian Malaysia concept.

This comes despite Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s recent arguments that the Umno-led Barisan Nasional (BN) has already implemented a welfare state in its five decades in power.

Assistant chief editor Datuk Zaini Hassan wrote in his column that Malaysian Malaysia, first used by Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) when it was still part of Malaysia, would ignore special Malay and Bumiputera rights and lead to social unrest.

“When studied closely, it is actually the Malaysian Malaysia concept… that neglects the special rights of another race that is being systematically driven by DAP, a PAP splinter party,” he wrote.

Ahead of a general election expected within the year, Umno and PAS, the two largest Malay-Muslim parties, have locked horns in a public debate over the welfare state concept that the Islamic party introduced in its general assembly two weeks ago.

President Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang had retreated from a hardline Islamic state agenda in his opening address, choosing instead to focus on a welfare state that redistributes wealth by taking a razor to government-linked corporations’ profits.

Umno immediately attempted to discredit the party with the Malay ground, with Najib echoing former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s statement that PAS had veered from its Islamic state agenda due to DAP’s influence. Both PM Najib and his deputy, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, have said that PAS’s welfare state was not new and that BN has already been practising it in government.

Today, Zaini repeated the claim that a welfare state has nothing to do with an Islamic state and added that if DAP takes over Malaysia, “it will not be an economic policy that helps races that are in difficulty nor balance out the prosperity of different races as is already being done successfully now.”

“Are they willing to see students from one (race) not receive even one scholarship because another is seen as more deserving according to meritocracy? We fear that DAP’s welfare state will cause social unrest.

“If that is the way, then this country will be at war,” he wrote.

The Malay daily further accused Pakatan Rakyat (PR) of not implementing any welfare programmes in the four states it currently controls, and held this as proof that the welfare state agenda was just a front for DAP’s Malaysian Malaysia.