Will Najib at the Cabinet meeting tomorrow put a stop to the Dyanaphobia which is beginning to sweep Muhyiddin’s Education Ministry

A new phobia is sweeping the Boleh-land of Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

I will like to know whether Najib at the Cabinet meeting tomorrow will put a stop to the Dyanaphobia which is beginning to sweep the Education Ministry under the Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin or whether he would also succumb to it.

Is Dyanaphobia the inevitable result of what has been described as “Dyanamania” which swept Teluk Intan and the country during the Teluk Intan by-election from May 19 – 31, although 26-year-old DAP/PR candidate, Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud lost to the Gerakan President and BN candidate, Datuk Mah Siew Keong by a wafer-thin majority of 238 votes in a record-low voter-turnout of 66.5% on polling day on May 31.

It indeed the height of irony that on the hand, the UMNO Secretary-General and Federal Territories Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor is urging teachers to return to politics under Barisan Nasional’s fold, conceding that the headmasters, principals and teachers were the “real movers” of Umno, MCA, MIC and BN in the past, but on the other hand, high-ranking officials from Education Ministry were reprimanding a teacher for posting campaign posters of Dyana Sofya on Facebook.

The teacher was told to remove the Facebook posting as it was “anti-government” and her actions will be monitored.

Is this what Najib meant when he boasted that he wanted to make Malaysia the “best democracy in the world” – where teachers have only the right to take part in politics if they become the “prime movers” of Barisan Nasional but not Pakatan Rakyat, becoming practitioners of hypocrisy and double standards in front of the new generation of Malaysians they are teaching in the schools in the country?

If teachers are not allowed to put up Dyana’s posters on their Facebooks, how can headmasters, principals and teachers be allowed to be active in Barisan Nasional to resume their role as the “prime movers” of the UMNO, MCA and MIC as in the spread of Dyanaphobia as a counter to “Dyanamania” in the schools?

During the Teluk Intan by-election, UMNO/BN pulled out all the stops to launch the dirtiest by-election campaign of lies, falsehoods and calumny against the candidate and the DAP not only in the history of Teluk Intan but probably in the country for fear that Dyana would be elected as MP for Teluk Intan, for Dyana symbolises everything UMNO/BN are not – youthful and self-less idealism for an united Malaysian nation transcending the politics of race and in pursuit of justice, freedom, accountability, incorrupt leadership and good governance.

It is not just the one person of Dyana Sofya whom the UMNO/BN should fear, but the tens and hundreds of thousands of “Dyana Sofyas” in Malaysia who have been inspired by the example by the DAP/PR candidate for Teluk Intan to come forward to take a stand to roar for a moderate Malaysia for all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or region, and to dissociate themselves from all forms of racial and religious extremism in the country.

If the UMNO/BN government succumbed to Dyanaphobia, there is no clearer signal of the impending end of UMNO/BN rule in Malaysia.

Lim Kit Siang DAP Parliamentary Leader & MP for Gelang Patah