Press Statement

by Lim Guan Eng

(Petaling Jaya, Saturday): UMNO Youth Deputy President and Malaysia’s most famous son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin should be awarded the Oscar for Best Actor with the FRU personnel guarding the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre the Best Supporting Actors in the farcical protest by UMNO Youth, MCA Youth and MIC Youth against visiting US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice yesterday. Khairy correctly told reporters that  all Malaysians — irrespective of race and religion — condemned the Israeli violence and blamed the United States for providing weapons to Israel and sanctioning the violence.

But his fine-sounding intentions sounded absurd and perverse when he added,

"From the people of Malaysia, we do not welcome Rice here. You may be invited by the Government, but we do not welcome Rice here”.

Rice was invited by his father-in-law’s government and Khairy is a member of the government. If the government is supposed to represent the people of Malaysia, how can Khairy as a member of the government not welcome Rice?

What type of Oxford logic or double-speak is there that can turn black into white and turn right to wrong? If Khairy is sincere in opposing Rice and condemning the slaughter of innocent civilians by Israelis and American-supplied weaponry, then he should as a member of the government convince his father-in-law not to invite Rice to Kuala Lumpur. Instead Rice loved the hospitality of the Malaysian government so much that she lingered and tarried in Kuala Lumpur one more night instead of going back to the Middle-East.

Clearly this is all play-acting with Khairy, arm in a sling, to score political points within UMNO. Khairy wants to prove that he is not all about ECM-Libra and the brains behind his father-in-law but also muscular in action opposing the depredations of Israel against the Palestinians and Lebanese.

That is why Khairy should be awarded an Oscar for best actor in sounding so sincere and forgetting that he was a member of the government with those ridiculous words, “that even you are invited by the Malaysian government, the people of Malaysia do not welcome you here”. If Khairy is sincere, he should be protesting against the Malaysian Foreign Minister Datuk Syed Hamid Albar for inviting Rice to Kuala Lumpur?

If Khairy deserves a best actor award, then the Federal Reserve Unit personnel deserves to be awarded Oscar best supporting actors. Our FRU personnel must be the greatest wimps in the world if they are so incompetent in not being able to prevent one Khairy Jamaluddin from passing the barrier. It is bizarre how one Khairy, arm in sling, can push past more than 10 burly FRU personnel. No wonder Americans secret service has no confidence in our security arrangements when it is so lax and wimpish.

The IGP must explain why police did not act against Khairy but can beat up peaceful demonstrators protesting against the fuel hike when the demonstrators did not even attempt to pass any barriers. Such double-standards prove that it is not only Americans who practice double-standards in regards to human rights.

(29/07/2006)