I had an interesting banter with my friends recently. Many of my friends are quite aged i.e. 55 years old and above.

Not by choice though. You see, most of my peers are not based in Seremban. I shall not name these friends of mine but let me tell you that they are both professionals and semi-retired. These people are working just to kill time.

One of the gentlemen commented to me that there is a huge gap between the Chinese and Malays now after the GE13. The other gentleman agreed and asked me, "Where do we go from here now?"

I then asked them what made them feel this way.

One of them then said that a senior top official of Malay ethnicity told him that the Chinese are ungrateful for accepting all the BRIMs and eating at all the BN-organised dinners and yet voted against the BN.

I immediately said that BN does not represent the Malays.

Why are they equating "not supporting BN" with "not supporting the Malays"?

They went on to say that the Malay top official also said that the Chinese which constitutes 26% ( sic ) - as Chinese now constitutes 23% according to this latest report of Malaysia's population - controls 60% of Malaysia's economy.  

I then asked for the source of that contention. Whereas I gave them Lim Teck Ghee's findings (five years ago) that the Malays now control more than 45% of Malaysia's economy.

Then they said that if the Chinese stopped doing business then Malaysia's whole economy would shut down.

It is just like saying if the Malays stopped doing business then Malaysia's economy would be shut down as well. It won't be shut down totally, maybe the people would be inconvenienced.

Anyway, all this is in my opinion, a smokescreen put up by Umno to create a racial divide in order to divide and rule.

We have to outgrow this lest we be shackled by it.

This so-called Chinese Tsunami or 'Cinami' is not against the Malays but it is against BN. Umno do not represent the Malays.

After 2008's tsunami, there were more Malay members of Parliament than before.

Pakatan Rakyat's component parties consist of PKR, PAS and DAP. All these parties are open to all races. In fact, the Malays are the majority in both PKR and PAS.

Using simple mathematics, one would realise that with the 51% popular votes garnered by Pakatan Rakyat, the majority of the votes were from the Malays.

The Malays who are ABU (Anything but Umno), the Malays who are against the BN, the Malays who can think, the Malays who are progressive, the Malays who love Malaysia, the Malays who are Malaysians first and most importantly, the Malays who are our future!

To those so called top officials (who are Umno cronies anyway), don't tell us that Umno represents the Malays. Don't try to create racial tension.

Don't even try to create hatred in the Malays against the Chinese. The Cinami is not against the Malays. The Cinami is against BN, period.

NICOLE TAN LEE KOON is the secretary of the Seremban branch of Negri Sembilan DAP.