Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has ticked off Umno's BN partners for staying with a party that has shown only "contempt" for the minority races of Malaysia during the ruling party's annual general assembly concluding last night.

Lim, who is also DAP secretary-general, trained his guns particularly on Permatang Pauh Division chairperson Mohd Zaidi Mohd Said ( below ) for attributing the success of Penang Chinese to illegal businesses.

"Umno has clearly given up on winning the Chinese votes and have now decided to treat them with contempt, with lies and insults.

"MCA, Gerakan and MIC have shown that they are without any shred of honour and dignity by continuing to stick to, and support such a racist and extremist party that bullies and threatens ordinary Malaysians," said Lim in a statement today.

"Everyone in Penang can succeed whether Chinese, Malay or Indian, if they are honest and work hard.

"To accuse the Chinese who have succeeded as being engaged in illegal activity is an insult and contempt towards those who are clean, honest and hard-working," he added.

He said Zaidi's remark made during the Umno AGM was disingenuous as the latter should know matters of crime were in the hands of the federal government's police force, and not the state administration.

Expressing conviction that the BN government would not take any action against Zaidi for his remark, Lim called on all to lodge police reports against the Umno leader for "criminal defamation and seditious lies made with malicious intent to incite racial hatred".

"Police reports must be lodged for the record to defend the dignity and honour of the people of Penang," he said.

Who's right, cops or Zaidi?

Lim also dismissed Mohd Zaidi's apparent backtracking after the latter reportedly claimed his statement was directed at law enforcers instead of the Chinese in Penang.

Lim demanded to know whether MCA and Gerakan, who purportedly received this explanation from Mohd Zaidi, accepted the justification.

"The Penang police chief Abdul Rahim Hanafi denied in today’s papers that there were such illegal activities in Penang.

"Such baseless allegation by Mohd Zaidi, is also an attack on the police in Penang for being so ineffective that such lawlessness or illegal activity exists?" he said.