Media statement by Lim Kit Siang in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, 9^th January 2011: 

Utusan Malaysia's daily staple of lies and falsehoods to stoke communal poison and hatred, sowing distrust and national disunity, the greatest disservice to Najib's 1Malaysia slogan and nation-building

Utusan Malaysia’s daily staple of lies and falsehoods to stoke communal poison and hatred, sowing distrust and national disunity, is the greatest disservice to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia slogan and nation-building.

Mingguan Malaysia today is again at its anti-national worst with its daily diet of lies and falsehoods to poison the political system and undermine the nation-building process when it made the completely wild and baseless charge in insinuating in its editorial that DAP is working towards the goal of making Malaysia a republic and the abolition of the system of Malay rulers.

In its Sunday editorial “Iktibar kemelut Selangor” by Awang Selamat, Mingguan Malaysia insinuated that the lesson to be learnt from the Selangor crisis is that Malaysia will end up a republic if PKR and DAP’s “rule of Selangor continues”, viz:

“Tetapi iktibar daripada kemelut di Selangor itu ialah jika PKR dan DAP memerintah, lagi banyak berlaku kemudaratan. Yang paling pasti, Malaysia akan berada di ambang republik.”

There is no need for me to reiterate the DAP’s public stand down the decades supporting the system of constitutional monarchy in Malaysia.

What Awang Selamat had insinuated are downright lies and falsehoods scraping the very bottom of gutter journalism. In seven paragraphs of “Iktibar kemelut Selangor”, Awang Selamat had told more than seven lies in its multiple objective to disseminate communal hatred and ill-will, even attempting to sow discord among the Pakatan Rakyat parties of PKR, DAP and PAS in the Selangor coalition government.

Under Najib’s premiership and presidency of Umno, Utusan Malaysia has fully transformed from a newspaper into a “liespaper”, diametrically opposed to Najib’s objective of promoting an all-inclusive 1Malaysia media!

If Najib and Umno leaders, as well as the leaders of the other Barisan Nasional component parties, whether MCA, Gerakan, MIC or the Sarawak and Sabah component parties, continue to close their eyes to the daily dosage of lies and falsehoods to carry out its nefarious objective of pumping communal poison, Malaysians regardless of race, religion, region or socio-economic grouping, are entitled to know what credibility could Najib’s 1Malaysia slogan command whether inside or outside the country.

After 18 months, is there not a single Cabinet Minister, whether Umno, MCA, Gerakan, MIC or Sabah/Sarawak component parties, who dare to raise in the Cabinet next Wednesday the grave issue of Utusan Malaysia’s hatchet job to discredit and dismantle Najib’s 1Malaysia concept with its daily staple of lies, falsehoods and poison to sow communal discord and national disunity?

*Lim Kit Siang, DAP Parliamentary Leader & MP for Ipoh Timor