Pakatan Harapan vice-president M Kulasegaran has said the minority vote is key to determining the outcome of the next general election.

Speaking at the Negeri Sembilan DAP Deepavali open house in Nilai last night, the federal legislator said Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak regards the Chinese vote as beyond his capacity to retrieve.

Chinese Malaysians voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in GE13.

“For GE14 Najib is concentrating on the Indians because he thinks he can entice them with goodies.

“Ask the Hindraf leader [P] Waythamoothy what happened after the last election about Najib's ability to keep his promises to the Indian people,” said the Ipoh Barat MP to a primarily Indian Malaysian audience of about 500 people.

Kula said Harapan chair Dr Mahathir Mohamad, in meetings of the coalition's leadership council, relentlessly emphasises the importance of the minority vote in GE14.

“In 61 parliamentary seats, the Indian vote is going to be critical to the results, given that the Chinese vote is foregone, and the Malay vote is splintered among several parties.

“So you people are going to be crucial to the outcome of GE14,” asserted Kula to a cheering crowd.

Kula, a four-term DAP lawmaker, was co-opted as member of the Harapan leadership council, first as treasurer and then as vice-president. He became the first Indian rep on the council.

On another theme, Kula said that MIC has been claiming that Mahathir did not bother about Indian Malaysians during his 22 years as prime minister.

“This is not true,” countered the Ipoh lawyer, whose profile among Indian Malaysians heightened in the last eight years on account of professional and political advocacy of the plight of kindergarten teacher Indira Gandhi.

Indira’s three children were unilaterally converted to Islam in 2009 by her estranged husband who had newly embraced the faith.

Kula fought a winning battle in civil jurisdictions for the restoration of Indira's child custody and human rights, but those triumphs were, in each instance, rendered nugatory by the Syariah Court.

Kula recounted the “goodies” Mahathir (photo) had given the Indians through the MIC.

“He gave 10 million Telekom Malaysia shares to Maika Holdings in the 1980s, and allocated the land on which AIMST was built in Kedah,” said Kula.

Maika Holdings slid into insolvency in the 1990s after a promising start a decade earlier, that saw the corporation raise RM100 million as start-up capital – a considerable sum then, considering it was garnered from among a community regarded as impoverished, and during a time when the country was going through a recession.

AIMST, or the Asian Institute of Medical, Science and Technology, is a tertiary institution MIC set up in 2001 as a private non-profit university.

Its foundation is largely credited to S Samy Vellu, the longtime MIC supremo who retired in 2010.

Kula did not disparage both initiatives, but instead drew attention to the help both projects received from Mahathir, who was PM at their inceptions.

“The 10 million shares Mahathir gave Maika were worth RM100 million, but what happened to them?” queried the federal legislator.

“The MIC says don't trust Mahathir, but I say don't trust MIC and don't trust Najib. Ask Waythamoorthy if he agrees with me or not,” said Kula.

Later in the night Kula, who sits next to Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar in Parliament, told a Harapan-organised Deepavali open house in Tanjong Malim, Perak, that Najib's recent hospital visit to see Harapan adviser Anwar Ibrahim was a publicity stunt.

He equated it to the “goodies” that the PM was dangling to the Indians in the run-up to GE14.

“Najib told Anwar not to trust Dr Mahathir,” said Kula. “But can Anwar trust a man and his wife who helped put him in jail?” he chided.

Kula revealed that Anwar had sent him a congratulatory message on his elevation from 15 to 14th place in the DAP central executive committee polls on Nov 12.

“After Najib's visit to Anwar, I saw a tweet from Anwar saying 'Lawan tetap lawan.'

“Now you make your conclusions on the effectiveness of Najib's visit to Anwar,” concluded Kula, who was the last speaker at the Tanjong Malim event.