Will Hadi follow Razman’s example and apologise for his baseless and preposterous allegation that DAP promoting Islamophobia or will he have to be dragged to court like Razman before doing so?

It is eleven weeks that PAS President, Hadi Awang has not been able to produce an iota of evidence to substantiate his wild and preposterous allegations that DAP is anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist, and promoting Islamopobia, and yet Hadi will not apologise for his allegations and retract them.

Will Hadi follow Perak PAS Chief, Razman Zakaria’s example and apologise for his baseless and preposterous allegation that DAP promoting Islamophobia, or will he have to be dragged to court like Razman before doing so?

Razman apologised to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim at the Ipoh High Court for claiming during an election campaign last year that Anwar condoned LGBT practices as part of a settlement agreement between the two.

Anwar’s lawyer SN Nair said his client had consented to the settlement agreement as a goodwill gesture and to let the matter rest.

Will Hadi reiterate his allegation that the DAP is promoting Islamophobia in Parliament, which begins on Monday?

Hadi must be made an example of how irresponsible and immoral a political/religious leader can be in making wild, preposterous, and completely baseless allegations of political opponents, a practice which must be stopped in an era where the toxic and divisive politics of lies, falsehoods, and fake news could polarise race and religious relations in a plural society like Malaysia.

Hadi had also been seriously remiss in his duties as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to the Middle East to two “backdoor” Prime Ministers — Muhyiddin Yassin and Ismail Sabri — when he failed to report to the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) Islamophobia Observatory, which conducts global and daily monitoring of Islamophobia, about Islamophobia in Malaysia.

I asked last week whether Hadi was suggesting that Malaysians who do not vote for PAS candidates in elections were promoting Islamophobia?

Hadi got away in 2018 when he made preposterous allegations against the DAP for being the mastermind over the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) ratification issue when the DAP knew nothing about the issue, but Hadi has never apologised for his preposterous allegations against the DAP when he knew the truth.

The ICERD issue in 2018 allowed Hadi to spread lies and falsehoods that DAP was anti-Malay, anti-Islam, and anti-Royalty.

Will Hadi continue to polarise race and religious relations in Malaysia with his toxic politics of lies, falsehoods, and fake news?

Malaysia’s race and religious relations have reached a new nadir as illustrated by the recent incidents: the segregation of students based on religion in a SPM workshop in Johor; a national women’s hockey player’s racist remarks about the concert of a famous Indian composer; a teacher who allegedly told one of his students to embrace Islam to boost his chances of becoming a national footballer and pervasive racism in sports.

Are we to stand idly by while polarisation in race and religion relations escalates?

In the early days of Independence, many Malay leaders were educated in mission schools, but there was no attempt to convert them from Islam to Christianity.

Should schools continue to be the seedbed of racial and religious polarisation?

Should we allow the toxic and divisive politics of lies, falsehood, and fake news be the basis of nation-building as illustrated by Hadi Awang’s wild and preposterous allegations that the DAP was the mastermind in the ICERD ratification issue in 2018 and was promoting Islamophobia?

For the past two-and-a-half months, Malaysians have been living in hope for a better future, where there is greater national unity from the country’s ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, and where Malaysia can return to become a first-rate world-class nation instead of being condemned to a second-class mediocre nation after six decades of nation-building or condemned to end up as a divided, failed, kleptocratic state on Malaysia’s Centennial in 2057.

That Malaysians are living in hope in the last two-and-a-half months has been confirmed by the Merdeka Centre survey that over two-thirds of the respondents interviewed or 68 percent gave Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim positive ratings for his leadership.

The survey, carried out in the second month after the 15th general election, reported that Anwar’s approval ratings were highest among Indians (91 percent), with Chinese respondents coming in second (73 percent).

He received about 70 percent approval ratings from Sabah and Sarawak’s bumiputera respondents, and 60 percent from Malays.

The same survey also saw 54 percent of the respondents saying they were satisfied with the overall performance of the new federal government, while 25 percent reported dissatisfaction.

The survey also found that a vast majority (79 percent) welcomed the results of the general election.

Additionally, 83 percent of the respondents favoured the Yang di-Pertuan Agong appointing Anwar as the 10th prime minister.

Of the respondents, 77 percent believed that the unity government can bring about stability and inclusiveness to the country’s politics, with 75 percent accepting Perikatan Nasional’s decision to remain as opposition.

Plus, 66 percent of them accepted BN’s decision to join the Pakatan Harapan-led government.

Other positives from the survey include:

• 48 percent believe the country is now headed in the right direction, compared to just 20 percent in October 2022;
• 43 percent expressed optimism about the national economy in the coming year, up from 23 percent in October 2022;
• 38 percent were optimistic about their personal financial prospects compared to 26 percent in October 2022.