I wish all Buddhist in Malaysia a very Happy and Enlightening Wesak Day and non-Buddhists a very happy holiday.
Two thousand five hundred years ago, a prince was born and named Siddhartha Gautama who sought and attained Enlightenment.
The best way to celebrate Wesak Day, which commemorates three significant events in Gautama Buddha’s life namely his birthday, enlightenment and passing away, is to truly and sincerely strive to follow his teaching, reiterate the determination to lead noble lives, develop the minds and practice loving kindness and bring peace and harmony to humanity.
My wish on Wesak Day is for all leaders, starting with the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, to walk the talk of their Wesak Day messages. In conjunction with Wesak Day, Najib called on all Malaysians, regardless of race or ethnicity, to come together as one.
I urge Najib to show leadership by example in his call on the people to set aside their differences at all levels of society by taking all necessary steps to end race politics and unwind the escalation of racial polarization 19 days ago since the 13GE on May 5.
There were irresponsible attempts to play the 3R cards of race, religion and the rulers in the 13GE, for instance in the outrageous, dishonouable and utterly baseless allegations by the former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir to pit the Malays against the Chinese by claiming that I was contesting in Gelang Patah to cause a “racial confrontation” and to incite Chinese to hate Malays, but it was after the 13GE results on May 5 that racial polarization became a serious national question. It was Najib who started the escalation of racial polarization after the 13GE with his ill-advised racist allegation of “Chinese tsunami” when the 13GE results werte a Malaysian, urban and semi-urban, and most important, a youth tsunami!
The escalation of racial polarization was allowed to continue unchecked, with Utusan”s provocative, inflammatory and seditious headline “Apa lagi Cina Mahu”, the former Court of Appeal judge Mohd Noor Abdullah’s most incendiary and seditious speech in 44 years, UiTM pro-chancellor Tan Sri Dr. Abdul Rahman Arshad’s call for the abolition of Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools, as well as the call by some Malay groups to boycott Chinese business as a form of vendetta for the 13GE results.
If Najib is Prime Minister for all Malaysians, which he had repeatedly claimed, he would not have countenanced the escalation of racial polarization in the past three weeks, and would put his foot down to rein in the daily racist cocktail spewing out of Utusan Malaysia, an Umno outfit.
Is Najib prepared to demonstrate that he has the political will to “walk the talk” of his Wesak Day message by unwinding the escalation of racial polarization and most important of all, to end race politics by getting UMNO and all race-based political parties in Barisan Nasional to open their doors to ensure that they are all Malaysian and not race-based political parties?
(Wesak Day Statement in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, 24th May 2013: