Mahathir ready to meet unity minister over recent racial comments
Published on: Wednesday, January 17, 2024
By: FMT
Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has been accused of expressing views that can cause racial division. (Mahathir Mohamad Facebook pic)
PETALING JAYA: Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who recently drew brickbats over his remarks about non-Malays, has stated his willingness to meet national unity minister Aaron Ago Dagang on the matter.
Aaron had said he was willing to meet Mahathir “if he continues to express sensitive (views) that can cause racial division”.
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“I am ready to meet the minister, just like he proposed. I hope he’ll be there,” Mahathir said in a posting on X.
In a recent interview with Chennai-based Tamil news channel Thanthi TV, Mahathir claimed that the Chinese and Indians still identified with their ancestral countries.
The former prime minister claimed that Malaysian Chinese and Indians were different from “the original people who founded the country” as they did not speak Bahasa Melayu and had their own schools and culture.
When the host noted that apart from speaking Tamil, Malaysian Indians also spoke Malay and were committed to Malaysia, Mahathir replied: “Malaysian Indians do not speak Malay as their home language. They speak Tamil.”
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Mahathir also called the Chinese and Indians “migrants”, saying they could not therefore claim that Malaysia belonged to them. He added that they should assimilate Malay culture and become Malay if they wanted to claim the country was theirs.
In his X posting today, Mahathir took a jab at “those who constantly talk about multiracialism” and who criticised him for his comments on race-related issues, asking them why race-based political parties still existed in Malaysia.
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“There is a party that claims to be a multiracial party, but one of its former leaders says that the party is ‘fake multiracial’,” he said, in an apparent dig at DAP.
Former Penang deputy chief minister P Ramasamy resigned from DAP in August 2023, just before the six state elections, claiming that the party was not multiracial despite its claim of being so.
The former Penang DAP deputy chief also claimed that Indian and Malay figures were used as token leaders to boost the party’s political agenda.
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