KLANG, Dec 23 — Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) president Datuk Seri Mohamad Sabu said he wants party members to reject racial discrimination and to stop all expressions of racial dominance against minority races.
He said rhetoric and narratives that the Malays are being oppressed in Malaysia were silly and only something their opponents Perikatan Nasional (PN) will spout to scare Muslims in Malaysia.
“We can all live in Malaysia together. There will be no supreme race, no supreme Chinese, no supreme Indian, no supreme Malay. We’re all in this together. We should not tolerate cruelty in the name of religion or race. Islam is for everyone, and not to be used to scare people.
“This is what we should communicate, that being together, be it part of Islam or not, is the real point and the real reason for us to grow, strengthen our unity, and most of all, encourage progress,” Mohamad Sabu said during Amanah’s national convention here, today.
Mohamad Sabu, who also goes by the moniker of Mat Sabu, said PN was using race and religion to play up identity politics by trying to assert its dominance over other races.
He said such people had forgotten Malaysia’s true values which is diversity and multi-ethnicity.
He accused them of trying to raise tensions to further their political careers.
“Identity and race are the two easiest things to ride on for political capital. We hear these people saying Malays are oppressed and Islam is side-lined. We hear it in all the mosques. We even hear that the Chinese are taking over.
“So instead of looking at the data, statistics and demographics, we plant these terrible sentiments in people’s minds, and they blindly believe it. In all honesty, look at our DAP friend today, he doesn’t even have kids yet,” Mohamad Sabu said, alluding to DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke who was a guest at the convention.
“Chinese usually have one or two kids, but when I ask my Malay friends how many wives they have? Two kids? 23. That’s not all, I met an Amanah activist recently, he has four wives. I asked about the kids, he said 39.
“Anyone here with that many kids, please stand up,” he said to laughter from the hall.
“I mean, would this guy know all the 39 kids’ names? Think about it, this is why when we talk about race, we forget we are doing OK. How is this oppression?
“We must keep reminding ourselves that we are a multi-ethnic country, and we must stop these conflicts of identity politics which are very toxic, extreme and dangerous,” he added.
Mohamad Sabu said Amanah’s strengths lie in its openness and inclusivity regardless of race.
The party’s ideologies are progressive and inclusive and based on the Federal Constitution which is entrenched in Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) manifesto and pledge.
In closing, Mohamad Sabu, who is also minister of agriculture and food security, said he wants all Amanah members to be respectful, have a good moral compass and to promote unity in the unity government.
The Amanah convention is taking place over three days and will conclude tomorrow during which new leadership is voted in.
At today’s launch event, apart from Loke, Malay Mail spotted Umno’s Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan and Datuk Seri Zambry Abdul Kadir, PKR’s Fadhlina Sidek, Fahmi Fadzil and Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari, and Parti Bangsa Malaysia’s Datuk Larry Sng, among others.
