This year’s Umno  and Umno Youth General Assemblies have put the clock back for nation-building by decades raising the question whether the 50th anniversary celebration next year for half-a-century of nationhood could be meaningful for all Malaysians

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Ipoh, Satursday) :  The just-concluded Umno and Umno General Assembles  have put the clock back for nation-building by decades raising the question whether the 50^th anniversary celebration next year for half-a-century of nationhood could be meaningful for all Malaysians.

It is naïve for anyone to believe or claim that all the  “fire and brimstone” – the extremist, incendiary and seditious rhetoric of warnings and threats - at the Umno and Umno Youth general assemblies can be forgotten or  put aside after the Prime Minister and Umno President, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has delivered his winding-up speech without long-term implications  whether for nation-building internally or for international competitiveness and foreign investment globally.

Abdullah’s pledge that Umno will be fair to all has lost its  full meaning and impact it should have after the barrage of extremist,  racist, incendiary and   seditious rhetoric in the five-day Umno general assemblies, raising grave doubts among moderate and rational Malaysians, Malays and non-Malays – who comprise the overwhelming majority of the population – whether the Abdullah premiership can really be fair to all Malaysians.

Furthermore, in failing to reprimand such extremist, racist, incendiary and seditious rhetoric, whether Abdullah had really lost control or is exercising a most extraordinary form of control which can have no optimistic outcome.

Are the Cabinet and the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council slated to hold emergency meetings to consider what corrective steps and remedial actions could be taken immediately to undo the grave harm and damage which had been done to the Malaysian psyche, nation building as well as to Malaysia’s international competitiveness as a magnet for foreign direct investment?

The concept of “Bangsa Malaysia” in Vision 2020 is a major casualty of the excesses of the Umno and  Umno Youth general assemblies.

I agree with the  Deputy Prime Minister and Umno Deputy President, Datuk Serri Najib Razak  who said Bangsa Malaysia is not a constitutional definition but a general concept and “a state of mind where the prejudices among the different races are reduced each day with everyone regarding themselves as a Malaysian race”.

Such a Bangs Malaysia “state of mind” was conspicuously absent in the five-day five-day Umno and Umno Youth general assemblies, which  were actually living  proof that after nearly 50 years of nationhood, we are even further away from such a state of mind and concept of a  Bangsa Malaysia.

Is this the reason why the Johore Mentri Besar, Datuk Seri Ghani Osman had called for the abandonment of  the Vision 2020 objective of creating a Bangsa Malaysia just before the Umno general assembly?

In the last five days. “Malay Agenda” has become the new buzz word.  Is Malaysia to mark our half-a-century of nationhood with the institutionalization of Malay Agenda, Chinese Agenda, Indian Agenda, Kadazan Agenda, Iban Agenda, Orang Asli Agenda in every nook and corner of the Government and public service?

(18/11/2006)