Malaysia is at the crossroads – to move forward to be a top world-class nation with an inclusive nation-building policy leveraging on the best qualities of the diverse races, religions, languages and cultures or to be relegated to the trajectory towards a failed state obsessed by divisive and intolerant race and religious politics.

This challenge to Malaysian nation-building was highlighted by two recent events – firstly, the formal union of UMNO and PAS and secondly, the first post-14GE Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting after it had been reduced from 14 to three communal-based political parties, which decided that there was no consensus to dissolve Barisan Nasional.

The last few months have seen an intensification of the toxicity and viciousness of the politics of lies, hate, fear, race and religion in the country, which were first used in the 14th General Election campaign with three-fold objective:

1. To demonise the DAP as anti-Malay and anti-Islam;

2. To paint Pakatan Harapan as DAP stooge and puppet, and

3. To incite fear and panic that Malays will lose political power, perish and become strangers in their own land under a Pakatan Harapan government. Read the rest of this entry »