The DAP has taken a swipe at Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin for labelling the DAP a "chauvinistic party" due to its success in attracting Malays.

The party's secretary general Lim Guan Eng also slammed Khairy for reportedly resorting to playing the racial and religious card to stifle the cries for financial help from the poor.

He added that "Umno is no longer the hope for Malaysia" when its youth chief resorted to this tactic.

Lim ( left ) alleged that Khairy is striking fear in the hearts of the Malays that losing their special position is worse than being poor.

"Khairy has always been seen as a sober voice in the madness of religious hatred and racist cauldron that is Umno.

"However, he has (now) taken the dark road travelled by extremists like Perkasa and Ibrahim Ali, when he used his policy speech at the Umno Youth Assembly to blame the non-Malays for questioning the status of the rulers, special position of the Malays and the official status of Bahasa Malaysia as the national language,” said Lim, in a statement.

He said blaming non-Malays is "dishonest and evil" politics because it is simply false and malicious that the non-Malays had questioned such rights enshrined in the Federal Constitution.

He reminded Umno that it too has once questioned the rights of the Rulers in the early 90s.

"Coming from a racist party like Umno that is open only to the Malays/bumis and not non-Malays, Khairy called DAP "that chauvinistic party" due to our success in attracting Malay youths to join the DAP.

"Isn’t DAP’s success in beginning to attract Malay youths a positive sign that DAP is neither chauvinistic nor racist but a multi-racial political party fighting for all Malaysians?" asked the Penang chief minister.

Human Development Report ignored

Lim raised the probability that Khairy had used the racial spectre because of the latest revelation in the Malaysia Human Development Report 2013 that 53% of Malaysian households have no financial assets while one in three Malaysians have no banking or financial account of any kind.

The report had stated that rural households have the highest number of those without any financial assets (63%), compared to 45% of urban households.

By ethnic group, about 57% of non-Malay Bumiputera and 55% of Malays have no financial assets, with the figure for the Chinese and Indians at 45% and 44% respectively, the report added.

Citing figures from the Household Income Survey (HIS), the report also noted that nearly 90% and 86% of the rural and urban households, respectively, had no savings, while the majority of households at 88% had zero earnings from their savings.

Data from EPF savings as at 2013 showed that 90% of Malaysians nearing retirement age did not have enough funds to sustain a basic lifestyle for more than five years, the report showed.

Lim said the low EPF savings were due to the fact that the majority of Malaysians earned low wages.

He added that the monthly wage distribution from EPF shows that in 2013, one-third, or 2.1 million, active members earn less than RM1,000,  whilst slightly more than three-quarters (76.8%) earn less than RM3,000, and about 90% earn less than RM5,000 a month.

"Why did Khairy not address this report that was sponsored by the Prime Minister’s Department, with its direct impact on the economic future of Malaysians, especially the young as well as Malays/bumis?

"Clearly he has taken the easy way out by playing the racial cards, because he has no answers and knows that Umno is not part of the solution to the problem, but that Umno is the problem," he quipped.

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