Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has put his own daughter in a bad light by calling the Bersih 3.0 as “a warm-up” for Pakatan Rakyat to reject the result of the upcoming general election, said DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang.

“Is Mahathir telling the world that his daughter Marina is naive to be a pawn of Bersih 3.0 and Pakatan Rakyat to topple the Najib government by violence?

“Is he using the same brush to tar the 200,000 Malaysians regardless of race, religion, region, class, gender or age who had performed a supreme act of patriotism and national service in coming out peacefully on April 28 in support of a clean election and a clean Malaysia?” he said in a statement today.

He said Mahathir should be commending Marina for public-spiritedness in participating in Bersih instead of criticising her and Malaysians who had rallied to the cause.

The statement, he said, is the fifth item of evidence of a “highest-level campaign” to vilify and demonise Bersih 3.0 and Pakatan.

‘Scrap the independent panel’

This came after Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s allegations that Bersih 3.0 was a coup attempt; former inspector-general of police (IGP) Hanif Omar’s remark about “pro-communist individuals in the rally”;  another former IGP Rahim Noor’s Marxist tactics statements and Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein’s “democracy was hijacked” accusations.

azlan “What they have done is to collectively stack grounds to justify the case why the Hanif ‘independent advisory panel’ should be scrapped altogether as nobody expects the Hanif panel to be able to independent, impartial and objective.

“In fact, Hanif, together with Najib, Mahathir, Hishammuddin and Rahim should be required to appear as star witnesses to substantiate their preposterous allegations before a truly independent and credible inquiry.

“If the five are unable to produce any evidence to substantiate their allegations, then they should have the decency to publicly retract their preposterous allegations and tender public apologies,” he said.