BN component parties Gerakan and MCA have both panned minister Shahidan Kassim’s claim that voting along racial lines will ensure stability in the country.

While Gerakan president Mah Siew Keong dismissed the suggestion by the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department as “retrograde and divisive in nature”, MCA vice-president Chua Tee Yong argues that it clashed with PM Najib’s 1Malaysia concept.

Both made it clear that they would not support any such moves.

Mah said that urging to vote along racial lines is virtually against the Bangsa Malaysia concept which aims to create an inclusive and composite national identity for all Malaysians. He maintained that voting should be based mainly on the capability of the candidate to carry out his or her legislative duties as a parliamentarian or state assemblyperson under a representative democracy without narrowed reference to one’s race or religion.

The nation should move forward with voters giving more emphasis on competency and credibility of the candidate and not the ethnicity or religion of the candidate as we seek a more Malaysian society.

“As a multiracial party which upholds the Malaysian spirit, we at Gerakan denounce such a claim as we strongly advocate cross-racial voting patterns to promote national identity as Malaysian. Conversely, voting along racial lines contradicts government’s efforts to nurture social integration and wholeness of the nation which could eventually lead to social division and it certainly does not augur well for the welfare and stability of the country.

“A leader should always embrace a holistic, inclusive and forward-looking perspective to guide the people forward. I am disappointed with Shahidan. I expected more from him,” said Mah.

MCA’s Chua, who is also MP for Labis, called Shahidan’s proposal “outdated, unacceptable and nonsensical” for the Malaysian context.

“The proposal has also not been discussed among the BN component parties and I will not be supportive of such proposal as MCA provides services to all rakyat,” Chua said in a press release.

“When extremism and racism are being popularised by some unscrupulous people with their own political agenda, any effort to disintegrate the process of realising the 1Malaysia concept should not even be considered,” he added.

Drawing flak from think-tank

The proposal further drew flak from PKR-linked think-thank Institut Rakyat, which pondered how to engineer a fair PM under such a racist system.

“If we follow Shahidan’s political theory to its logical conclusion, the prime minister should be 67.4 percent bumiputera, 24.6 percent Malaysian-Chinese, 7.3 percent Malaysian-Indian, and 0.7 percent ‘other.’

“Leadership in this country will rest more on fine-tuned breeding programmes rather than elections,” its research director Yin Shao Loong said in a press statement.

Yin pointed out that many Malaysians voters have already rejected that only MPs with same physical characteristics as themselves can meet their needs. If minister Shahidan cannot understand these “basic principles of humanism”, then he should resign, Yin said.