Umno de facto deputy president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi took a dig at former Umno president Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s alleged Indian parentage today, and accused the latter of politically exploiting the Malays throughout his 22-year premiership.

Zahid, who is also the home minister, said he had been shown a copy of Mahathir’s identity card (IC), which supposedly stated his name as “Mahathir a/l Iskandar Kutty”.

Holding up his phone to the audience, he said, “This was his blue IC. His name was Mahathir a/l Iskandar Kutty. His blue IC number is […]. This was sent by the director-general of the National Registration Department (NRD).

“So he (Mahathir) was right when he said Malays are forgetful, because he is the son of Iskandar Kutty. This is the person who fought for the Malay agenda in order to use Malays.

“When the honey has run out, the honeycomb is thrown aside. Umno is like the honey, and we are the honeycomb that had been thrown away,” he said when officiating the closing ceremony of the Kelana Jaya Umno’s divisional meeting today.

The patronym “a/l” (short for “anak lelaki”, meaning “son of”) is commonly used by Indian Malaysians, although it is also used by some indigenous groups. “Kutty” is a common Tamil name.

Malay male names normally carry the “bin” title instead, which is the Arabic term meaning “son of”.

Zahid claimed that he was not making a personal attack, however, and stressed that he was only “coincidentally” the home minister when he received the NRD's information about Mahathir's IC. The NRD comes under his ministry’s purview.

In his 2011 autobiography "A Doctor in the House: The Memoirs of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad", Mahathir acknowledged that he had "some" South Asian heritage.

"Some claim that my father was Malayalee and was fluent in both Tamil and Malayalam. Some have even written that he was a Hindu who converted to Islam to marry my mother. Others say they have seen documents clearly stating my ethnicity.

"I admit that some Indian, or more accurately South Asian blood flows in my veins, but from which part of the Indian subcontinent my ancestors came I do not know," he wrote at the beginning of the third chapter of the 62-chapter memoir.

Repairing the party

Meanwhile, Zahid compared the divisional meeting’s venue at the SMK Bandar Sunway hall to Umno.

He said 20 years ago, the hall was the best hall in Kelana Jaya. Today however, he noted that it was hot and stuffy, and the hall itself and its equipment needed repairing and repainting. 

Yet the roof, walls and pillars of the hall still stand strong, he declared, and hence the hall need not be replaced nor demolished. He announced a RM400,000 allocation for the hall’s renovation, and said the new hall would have an air-conditioning system.

Likewise, he said Umno was the "greatest party" 70 years ago, but had since lost some of its lustre. Again, he stressed, this did not mean that BN and Umno needed to be dismantled or replaced.

“We only need to change what is no longer good, and repair whatever that is bad," he said.