When the election is around the corner, MCA-owned The Star is no better than UMNO-owned Utusan Malaysia
The Star's further exploitation of the Kelantan summon for indecent behaviour issue on its front-page today entitled "Khalwat issue heats up" is a clear proof that a very desperate Barisan Nasional will do anything to manipulate facts and concoct stories.
Of the three pages of reporting under six different headings in The Star today, only the part involving PAS Supporters Congress Advisor Jeff Lee Weng Chun was new. The rest were regurgitation earlier news reports, even after PAS Secretary-General Mustafa Ali categorically denied that there was any khalwat cases involved.
The Star is looking down at its readers, just like the racially-charged Utusan Malaysia, exploiting a situation where not many of its mostly non-Muslim readers could distinguish between hudud (Islamic criminal law), Islamic family laws, khalwat (close proximity) and municipal council's indecent behaviour rule.
By lumping all together, The Star wants to paint a picture to its mostly non-Muslim readers that PAS is as an extremist party in the hope to frighten non-Muslim supporters for PAS and Pakatan Rakyat. That is a well-known MCA's tactics and strategies to win election for its political master Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
It's a shameful, immoral and devious act of The Star to allow itself, a daily mainstream newspaper, to become a cheap tool for a political party pursuing its racialist agenda, similar to that of Utusan Malaysia's hatred for fairness and equality.
In the lead up to the general election, the media controlled by Barisan Nasional are prepared to manufacture news with scant regards for truth. Therefore, Pakatan Rakyat must return to its core agenda for change agreed upon by all Pakatan Rakyat parties in the Common Policy Framework and Buku Jingga.
It is now well known that the next election will very much be decided by whether non-Malay swing voters were prepared to vote for PAS and whether Malay-Muslim swing voters were prepared to support DAP in the context of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition.
DAP urges all Pakatan Rakyat state governments to beware of Little Napoleons in our respective states and local governments attempting to plant the seed of doubt among the people to discredit Pakatan Rakyat as a credible national alternative.
Pakatan Rakyat parties and governments must not allow others - whether Little Napoleons in the Council or BN's controlled media - to dictate our agenda, which is to herald a new Malaysia that is democratic, corrupt-free and prosperous, with an economy that serves all Malaysians and not the cronies.
We must all be determined not to lose sight of our national objective which is only achievable if the majority of the 4 million middle ground voters support Pakatan Rakyat.
Let us return to Middle Malaysia.
