KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 — Maszlee Malik has given Umno Youth chief Datuk Asyraf Wajdi until tomorrow morning to apologise and retract his allegations about the Form 4 history syllabus.

In a tweet today, Maszlee thanked the Ministry of Education (MOE) for clearing the air on the claim that the Form 4 History textbook was revised to glorify communism during his tenure as the education minister in the Pakatab Harapan (PH) administration.

"Thank you KPM.

"I will wait until tomorrow morning for Dr Asyraf Wajdi to apologise publicly and retract his statement.

"If not, I will go ahead and file a defamation suit against him,” he tweeted today, using the Malay acronym for the MOE.

Earlier today, Maszlee polled the public via his official social media accounts, asking whether he should take legal action against Asyraf over his comments.

He shared screenshots of the poll’s results, showing that 93 per cent of his Instagram followers and 92 per cent of his Twitter followers supported his plans to take legal action.

Today, the MOE said the current edition of Malaysia’s Form 4 History textbook, which was recently the subject of controversy, actually had its contents checked by a multiracial panel of history experts in April 2018, with the facts even sent to government bodies such as the National Archives and National Museum for review.

This followed yesterday’s allegation by Asyraf that the current Form 4 History syllabus was revised as an alleged deliberate attempt by the previous PH government during its brief 22-month rule from May 2018 to February 2020 to purportedly condition students into thinking that socialism and communism are not bad.

Among other things, Asyraf said Umno Youth wanted the MOE to immediately withdraw the Form 4 History textbook and restore the facts that were allegedly manipulated.

In response to Asyraf Wajdi’s statement, Maszlee stated that changes to the Form 4 History textbook during PH’s rule were based on a process that had started and taken place when Barisan Nasional (BN) was in government and the education minister was from Umno.