Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is at again, defending his earlier criticism of DAP’s ‘racist politics’ and at the same time, exalting BN as the true multiracial solution to the country, with the argument that though Umno, MCA and MIC are racial parties, they had contested in elections “not under their own names but as the Alliance or BN coalition”.

“As a member of a multi-racial coalition they cannot promote only Malay, Chinese or Indian interests. They have coalesced into one political entity and their struggle is for all the races in that entity.

“The race-based parties working together in the interest of members of all races lose their racial character,” Mahathir wrote on his blog today.

The former premier of 22 years was earlier lambasted for his penultimate blog posting, where he "congratulated" DAP for "bringing racist politics into Sarawak", having won 12 out of 15 seats contested in most of the urban areas in the recent state election.

In the second part to his posting entitled ‘Victory in Sarawak II’, Mahathir insisted that though DAP claimed that they were multi-racial, “everyone knows what they are”.

‘No one believes DAP’s claims of multiracialism’

“Every time I mention DAP’s racism, the hackneyed rebuttal is that Umno is a racial party, more than DAP...

“The DAP, like (Singapore’s ruling party) the People’s Action Party, claims to be multi-racial but everyone knows the overwhelming majority of their members, supporters and their leaders are Chinese.

mahathir responses to suaram report 02 “And their struggle is principally against anything Malay and for what they claim to be Chinese rights. Their disguise that they are for Malaysians is exactly that - it is a disguise. No one is taken in by their claim to be multiracial,” he said.

Reminding that DAP’s earlier battlecry back in the late 90s was “Malaysian Malaysia”, Mahathir ( right ) said that the campaign “reflects that in their minds, Malaysia is presently not for all races, that it is for Malays only” with representation from other races ignored.

Giving a history lesson, he said that the races were deeply divided before independence and that multiracial parties were just not possible.

And because of that the founding fathers of post-independence politics Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tan Siew Sin and VT Sambanthan banded together to form a coalition of racial parties, a formula which has prevailed until now.

“Only the blind and the bigoted would fail to see the success of the coalition of racial parties and the power-sharing governments that they formed in Malaysia. In fact the opposition parties have realised this and are trying to form a coalition.

“But so far they can only cooperate during elections. They now don’t contest against each other. But each party is still racist, concerned only with its own race once the election is over,” said Mahathir.

While musing that maybe Malaysians will discard their racial origins in the distant future, he said the BN coalition is still presently the best solution.

“Maybe one day everyone will forget their racial origins and regard themselves only as Malaysians. But that day has not arrived yet.

“Until then only the BN coalition can represent all the races in Malaysia,” he wrote.