Dr Mahathir blames Najib’s ‘liberal’ leadership for causing more racism

KUALA LUMPUR — Mr Najib Razak’s “liberal” leadership style and desire to mimic the Western world’s “current thinking” on freedom and equality has caused the country to become more racist, Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today (June 2).

But he said such concepts could not be applied in Malaysia, where one race was still less developed than the others, and required affirmative action.

“So when you have a leader who just gets influenced by current thinking that ‘of course we must be liberal, we must not restrict people, we must do away with ISA (Internal Security Act), and we must be free to do anything’, the result is more tension between races.

“When there is tension between races, when the Malays realise they cannot rely on Chinese support anymore, they must go back to their own race”, he said.

“Before, we can be sure that the Chinese would support the government party and so will the Indians... but now people are more racist than ever before because the leadership does not understand the problem of the Malaysian community.”

The country’s longest serving prime minister said the main problem in Malaysia was that the races were not on the same economic level.

He said affirmative action had reduced inter-ethnic inequality, but Najib had abandoned this in his haste to “appear more liberal” and “get a pat on the back by the big people”.

“The races are not on the same level of economic development. When you just ignore that fact, then you find that the less developed people will go back to seek protection within their own race and racial problems become an issue.”

Dr Mahathir also dismissed liberalism as having failed even in the United States and Britain, and pointed to the growing influence of terrorist group Islamist State (ISIS) there as proof.

“If you look carefully, you will see liberalism has resulted in a lot of Muslims in Britain joining ISIS and slaughtering people,” he said. THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER