COMMENT Whether black or red, the colours conjure one ugly side of Malaysian politics.

Within the past one or two months, it is interesting that those opposing the yellow-T-shirt-clad Bersih convoy participants were mainly members of Umno.

Red was created in response to yellow, with an attempt to mimic the red and yellow shirts that clashed in Thailand.

And here in Malaysia, Sungai Besar Umno division leader Jamal Md Yunos is heading the red-shirts trying to provoke Bersih.

Interestingly, it is only Umno members who are mainly involved in the red-shirt movement. There is no indication that other political parties or their youth leaders are involved in the red-shirts. Perhaps, these leaders from MCA, MIC and Gerakan are occupied with their soft campaign, whereas their counterparts from Umno are out there showing off their invulnerability using silat.

Therefore, after two hours of protests near the Malaysiakini office, for Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin to now dissociate the wing from the red-shirts simply does not make sense. Umno’s signatures are all over the red-shirt movement.

When they rally even without a police permit, they are rarely hauled up by the police. It would be interesting to find out from inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar, whether Jamal had applied for a permit to rally in front of Malaysiakini’s office. They threw bottles at the police, but the police could not act. At the time of writing, only four red-shirts have been hauled up, with Jamal still untouchable.

Although there were only 700 people, Jamal boasted that he had 10,000 supporters. Were the rest having a siesta elsewhere?

In 2015, 200 red shirt supporters turned up in Ampang to rally against the present Selangor state government. Typical of his big mouth, Jamal also boasted that he would rally some 5,000 protesters to “save Selangor from the haphazard alliance”.

Unless one pays for the turnout, it is difficult for any rally organiser to predict the number of people turning up. Even at this point in time, Bersih 5 organisers would not know for sure the number of people who will be coming down to the streets of Kuala Lumpur.

And who would have the reason to protest against Pakatan, unless there are political motivations behind it? In the early days when Selangor was taken over by Pakatan, similar efforts were made to parade in front of the Selangor secretariat office with the head of a cow.

The same with the black shirt movement. When they appeared recently at Menara Umno in Penang, they were also Umno members led by Penang Umno Youth chief Rafizal Rahim. Their objective for the rally was to demand for the Penang chief minister to resign.

Again, we saw from the Sept 16 rally last year, ‘Himpunan Rakyat Bersatu’ was led by former Malacca chief minister Mohd Ali Rustam. Although Mohd Ali claimed that his rally was open to all Malaysians, it did not gain much traction from other races and the majority of the civil society.

He claimed that the Malays had been insulted by the four Bersih rallies, but the first three rallies were in fact, made up mainly of Malays from PAS.

I hope Bersih 5 will also see more Malays and Indians joining hands to support the urging for Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to resign from his position, in order for institutional reforms to be carried out for the sake of a better Malaysia.