By Lim Kit Siang – Malaysians must not allow extremists to turn Malaysia into a deeply polarised nation through unchecked dissemination of irresponsible and incendiary fake news and hate speech, creating deep divisions in the country and corroding basic political institutions, fuelling societal anger, ultimately endangering democracy and the nation itself.<\/p>\n
Recently, there have been many examples of such irresponsible and inflammable fake news and hate speech in multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious Malaysia.<\/p>\n
The most recent instance was the speech by a Penang State\u00a0 UMNO leader and Barisan Nasional Penang State Secretary, Datuk Omar Faudzar at \u00a0the UMNO General Assembly accusing the DAP of importing \u201cphantom voters\u201d from China to obtain more numbers through Chinese nationals.<\/p>\n
He told the UMNO General Assembly that if 5,000 of the Chinese nationals are placed in each of the Parliamentary constituencies, \u201call of our MPs will be wiped out\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cPolitics is a game of numbers. This is their strategy \u2014 to obtain numbers through these Chinese phantom voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
He alleged that\u00a0 that during his monthly Umno state meetings, he \u00a0found that the number of Chinese voters had increased in comparison to Malay voters and voiced his confusion, claiming that most Chinese families only have two children in comparison to many Malay families who tend to have more children.<\/p>\n
He\u00a0 wondered how did the Chinese voters outnumber the Malay voters in Penang by a factor of three to one.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cEvery month our report shows that for every 1,000 Malay voters, there are around 3,000 Chinese voters. We were wondering how did the Chinese outnumber us. If a Chinese (couple) start a family, they have only two children. Malays are more active (in producing kids), especially on Friday nights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere can we find more (Malay) voters?\u201d<\/p>\n
It should be easy to verify the whether Omar was telling the truth or disseminating irresponsible and incendiary fake news and hate speech which only further polarise Malaysia to the detriment to Malaysia\u2019s democracy and even existence.<\/p>\n
In the last two general elections, the percentage\u00a0of \u00a0Malay voters in Penang state have increased \u00a0from 35% or\u00a0 297,956 voters in 2013 to 37%\u00a0 or 349,737 in 2018 in contrast to the decrease in the percentage of\u00a0 Chinese voters in the state from 53% or 453,317 voters in 2013 to 52% or 488,505 voters in 2018.<\/p>\n
Omar also made the allegation of a Chinese national who \u201cobtained a Mykad and registered as a voter in Selangor\u201d but in a check that morning \u201chis record is not in the Election Commission\u2019s data\u201d.<\/p>\n
Again, it should not be difficult to verify whether such serious allegation has any factual basis or not.<\/p>\n
If the\u00a0disseminators of irresponsible and incendiary fake news and hate\u00a0 speech to deepen polarisation in Malaysia\u00a0 by fomenting hate, distrust and intolerance are \u00a0given \u00a0immunity and impunity for their dastardly actions, it is not only democracy but the very survival of the Malaysian nation that will be in peril.<\/p>\n
-Lim Kit Siang<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lim Kit Siang – Malaysians must not allow extremists to turn Malaysia into a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1101],"tags":[1697,1695,2604,6130,1576],"class_list":["post-2566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-your-thoughts","tag-dap","tag-lim-kit-siang","tag-mykad","tag-omar-faudzar","tag-umno"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang.jpg",400,345,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang-300x259.jpg",300,259,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang.jpg",400,345,false],"large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang.jpg",400,345,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang.jpg",400,345,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang.jpg",400,345,false],"newsium-slider-full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang.jpg",400,345,false],"newsium-featured":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang.jpg",400,345,false],"newsium-medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Lim-Kit-Siang.jpg",400,345,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Editor"]},"category_info":"Politics<\/a> Your Thoughts<\/a>","tag_info":"Your Thoughts","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2568,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2566\/revisions\/2568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}