Sungai Kandis by-election a crucial test whether Najib has succeeded in equating Islam with kleptocray in Malaysia

The Sungai Kandis by-election next Saturday will be a crucial test whether former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has succeeded in equating Islam with kleptocracy in Malaysia.

It will also be a crucial test as to whether Najib’s irresponsible, vicious and toxic politics of race, religion, fear, hate and lies, which failed to make the impact he had hoped in the 14GE to ensure the victory of UMNO/BN in the 14th GE, have still traction in Malaysian politics.

In the 14GE campaign, a major plank of the Najib strategy was to demonise DAP and Pakatan Harapan to incite fear and hatred based on fake news, lies and false information to sell the line that if UMNO was defeated, the Malays in Malaysia will perish as DAP, allegedly anti-Malay and anti-Islam, will dominate the Pakatan Harapan government with me as Prime Minister.

UMNO lost its unchallenged position as the political party with majority support of Malay voters in the 14GE because there were sufficient Malay voters who were intelligent and sophisticated enough to see through the humbug of such propaganda, and rejected Najib’s vicious and toxic politics of race, religion, fear, hate and lies.

They do not want, in particular, to equate Malays and Islam with kleptocracy.

This vicious and toxic politics of race, religion, hate, fear and lies have returned in the Sungai Kandis by-election campaign of UMNO.

With the support of PAS led by its President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang, the UMNO by-election campaign theme is the lie that Malays and Islam are perilously under threat under the new Pakatan Harapan government after the 14GE.

Will the voters in Sungai Kandis by-election succumb to the UMNO/PAS false propaganda that the Malays and Islam are perilously under threat under the Pakatan Harapan government, and misled into believing the vicious and toxic politics equating the future of Malays and Islam with Najib’s kleptocracy?

Najib had sang praises for the UMNO by-election candidate, but it is significant that in his maiden speech as an Opposition Member of Parliament last Thursday, Najib raised none of the issues about Malays and Islam periliously under threat – which should be Najib’s guiding theme of his speech in Parliament if he really believed that the Malays and Islam are perilously under threat under the Pakatan Harapan government.

This one incident more than any others highlight not only Najib’s political dishonesty and opportunism, but the dishonesty and opportunism of the UMNO/PAS campaign in the Sungai Kandis by-election that Malays and Islam are perilously under threat by the Pakatan Harapan Government.

Do MCA and MIC support the UMNO/PAS by-election campaign theme that Malays and Islam are perilously under threat under the Pakatan Harapan government? This is why I am asking for the third time for the MCA and MIC national leaderships to declare whether they want the UMNO candidate to win or lose in the Sungai Kandis by-election.