I feel sad that my appeal yesterday to UMNO leaders and Utusan Malaysia to stop insulting or running down their own Malay race by suggesting that top Malay leaders who had been Presidents or Deputy Presidents of UMNO, or Prime Ministers, Deputy Prime Ministers or Ministers, are men and women of such low character and morals that they are susceptible to become stooges or puppets after stepping down from their high office, had not been heeded!

I am not a Malay, but I think this is a calumny of the worst kind about the Malay race, and I want to protest against it in the strongest possible terms.

It is shocking and ironic that such calumny of the Malay race is coming from the incumbent Malay leadership in government and Utusan Malaysia, which are facing a life-and-death struggle to retain popular Malay support!

The founding President of UMNO, Datuk Onn Jaafar, was once denounced as a traitor to the Malay race. So was once Tunku Abdul Rahman, even Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah when he formed and headed Semangat 46, and now Tun Mahathir and Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

It is time that Malaysian politics, on the 60th anniversary of the country achieving Merdeka on August 31, 1957, become less infantile and racist and more mature and Malaysian.

Can we expect the present UMNO/BN leadership in Putrajaya grow with the times to lead Malaysia towards this era of more mature and Malaysian politics? Read the rest of this entry »