Jeffrey Cheah, the founder and chairman of Sunway Group, is right.

In his National Day Open Letter to fellow Malaysian, he wrote:

“We must all do what we can to clean up the toxicity that influence our conversations on race, religion and culture.”

Malaysia must clean up the toxicity that poisons Malaysia and condemns the country to a rogue and failed state.

Three such toxicity in recent years come to mind.

The most recent of the three examples of toxic politics is by the PAS President, Hadi Abdul Awang, who said he would answer in court about his recent statement accusing non-Muslims and non-Bumiputeras of being at the root of corruption in Malaysia.

There is no need for the courts to pass judgment as the court of public opinion have already convicted Hadi as a bigot and extremist, who is not prepared to be a Malaysian, seeing all things through extremist racist and extremist religious lens.

When the Transparency International (TI) started its annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI) in 1995, Malaysia was way ahead of India, China and Indonesia which were respectively ranked No. 35 with 2.78 points (India), 40 with 2.16 points (China) and 41 with 1.94 points (Indonesia) out of 41 countries surveyed. Malaysia was in 1995 ranked No. 23 and scored 5.28 out of 10 points.

After 27 years, in the TI CPI 2021, Malaysia is ranked No. 62 out of 180 nations with a score of 48 out of 100 points as compared to China which is ranked No. 66 with a score of 45 points, India ranked No. 85 with a score of 40 points while Indonesia ranked No. 96 with a score of 38 points.

All three countries of China, India and Indonesia have made great strides in fighting corruption while Malaysia had been falling behind and ranked and scored worse than in 1995.

Malaysia expects worse results in the TI CPI 2022.

China is likely to overtake Malaysia before the end of this decade while Indonesia and India might do so by this decade or the next.

What this illustrates is that Hadi’s remarks were completely irrational, bigoted, without any theological or factual basis.

As a leader of a political party aspiring for power, Hadi should be spearheading a campaign to fight corruption instead of justifying corruption by extremist and bigoted theories.

Instead Hadi has done the opposite and will disagree with Jeffrey Cheah with this statement in his National Day Open Letter:

“The recent decisions by the courts on corruption cases have sparked hope. The judiciary’s upholding of its institutional integrity is a huge step forward in this war against corruption.”

The second incident happened at the end of 2018.

I had repeatedly asked the Foreign Minister, Saifuddin Abdullah to admit that the 2018 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) fiasco was solely his own making as he was Foreign Minister in Pakatan Harapan Government and that DAP knew nothing about the proposed ICERD ratification although DAP was the target of demonization for being anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Royalty.

We are still living with the consequences of such toxic politics of lies, hatred, race and religion, so deftly mobilised during the ICERD fiasco in 2018 by among others, Hadi of PAS.

The third toxic event was the Sheraton political conspiracy in February 2020, which unconstitutionally, illegally and undemocratically toppled the Pakatan Harapan Government in 22 months.

As Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who was Prime Minister of the 22-month Pakatan Harapan Government wrote in his recent book “Capturing Hope”, the Sheraton Move conspirators played the toxic politics of promoting a “Malay-Muslim government” by falsely alleging that “the Chinese-dominated DAP was in control of the country” to justifry the toppling of the Pakatan Harapan government.

This has led to the formation of two back-door governments and black despair among the people who wanted an united, fair, just and prosperous Malaysia which could live up to its potential to be a world-class great nation.

Until August 23, 2022 for which social critic Zan Azlee pen an article entitled: “Malaysia has done the unimaginable, and we can do more”

But will Hadi end his toxic politics in Malaysia and demonstrate that he is a leader who is Malaysian first?

(Media Statement (2) by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, 4th September 2022)