Dr M blames media for racial polarisation

KUALA LUMPUR: Dr Mahathir Mohamad, whose tenure as premier was marked with almost absolute media control, said the nation is more “racially polarised” now and blamed the media for it.

Mahathir said he believes that race relations had worsened after he stepped down as prime minister in 2003.

“In those days, we didn’t talk so much about race, and show disrespect to others. Today, we talk about race and religion, creating a wedge between different races,” he told the 2011 CEO Forum here today.

While media freedom had slightly improved after Mahathir stepped down, the former premier said with his trademark sarcasm that his “dictatorial” method of ruling had kept the nation’s various races at peace unlike now.

“Race relations is not as good as when ‘a dictator of 22 years’ was leading the country,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience.

The continued Chinese support was testament to his multi-racial appeal, added the country’s longest-serving prime minister.

He said although the opposition tried to portray him as a “Malay ultra” whom the Chinese feared, his success in maintaining Barisan Nasional’s two-third parliamentary majority in the 1999 general election with Chinese support contradicted the claim.

“Chinese support gave me two-thirds majority despite the displeasure of Malays due to the black eye,” he said, referring to his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim’s injury.

PAS’ welfare state an ‘old hat’

Meanwhile, Mahathir also chided PAS’ fight for a welfare state, calling it an “old hat”.

The former premier said this was not the first time the Islamic party had tried to use the idea as campaign fodder.

According to Mahathir, PAS had used the same idea in the 1964 general election but failed to garner support and eventually abandoned it.

“It’s an old hat but it failed in 1964, now they are digging it up again,” he said.

Rival Umno had tried hard to exploit PAS’ new clarion call, accusing the nation’s second biggest political outfit of abandoning its Islamic roots and being a stooge of DAP.

Mahathir said the shift in ideology merely reflected the admission by PAS spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat that the “people were afraid of an Islamic state”.

“They are not doing it for Islam. They say it for political reasons,” he added.

Mahathir said it was the duty of PAS members to question the actions of their leaders whom he accused of serving their own political interest rather than that of Islam.

While PAS was trying to implement an Islamic state, he said that the party was willing to work with someone like DAP chairman Karpal Singh, a staunch secularist.

“How can you work with a person who says ‘over my dead body you can establish an Islamic state’?” he asked.

Mahathir reiterated that Malaysia was already an Islamic state and argued that there were other “more secular” countries in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference which called themselves Islamic states. - FMT