Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s act in praising the National Unity Consultative Council’s (NUCC) efforts on national reconciliation has not gone down well with Perkasa.

Secretary-general for the Malay right-wing group Syed Hassan Syed Ali says it views the prime minister’s praise as an insult to Islamic and Malay NGOs in the country.

This is in light of Perkasa’s previous criticism towards the composition of NUCC members, which it said saw less Malay Muslim representation and comprised members who were liberal-thinking and “anti-nationalist”.

“Malay Islam NGOs has openly released a statement rejecting the NUCC as the number of Malay and Muslims representatives in NUCC were far less than non-Malays and non-Muslims,” Syed Hassan said, adding they had also send Najib a memorandum on the matter.

However, instead of responding or acting on their objection, he said Najib “greatly disappointed” the NGOs by choosing to compliment the council.

“How can the PM praise the NUCC when the council, which is supposed to think of national unity, has numerous times released statements which have hurt the feelings of Malay and Islamic NGOs?,” he queried in a statement today.

In particular, Syed Hassan ( left ) referred to the council’s criticism of the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department’s (Jais) raid on the Bible Society Malaysia in January, and the call by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Joseph Kurup, involved in the setting up of the NUCC, for race column to be removed from official forms.

Bernama had reported on Tuesday that Najib had taken to Twitter to laud the NUCC, formed in November last year, for embracing his efforts on national reconciliation, saying it was “in line with 1Malaysia”.

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