I would like to comment on the letter Gerakan's multi-ethnic policy forgotten .

The writer's view that Gerakan is still basically a predominantly Chinese party holds water in its own way. During its recent National Delegates Conference, Mah Siew Keong, the party's youth chief (to the dismay of the non-Chinese members) gave his speech in Mandarin with no translation as though the non-Chinese members were invisible.

There was also a booklet entitled Gerakan - Reinventing for the 21st Century which was distributed to the delegates. But it was only published in English and Mandarin.

In the said booklet, item 4.2 (a) is as follows: 'To establish a Bangsa Malaysia that adopts the fine elements from all ethnic cultures as the foundation of the Malaysian culture.'

Mah's Mandarin-only speech and the failure to publish the booklet in the national language and Tamil makes Gerakan - either by design or default - guilty of not practising what it preaches.

For Gerakan to be relevant, it must shed Umno's undeclared maxim that 'Umno treats its Barisan Nasional component parties equally but it never makes them equal'.

By the same token, Gerakan should not only treat non-Chinese equally but also make them equal in order to reinvent Malaysia for the 21st century.