‘DAP to blame for racial image’

Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari.

PETALING JAYA: DAP should not blame others for being perceived as a racial and anti-Malay party, said MCA.

This is because DAP has always portrayed itself as “very Chinese” and can only win in Chinese majority constituencies, said MCA National Youth’s Young Professional Bureau chairman Eric Choo.

Aside from a handful of Malay youths in DAP, he said, the party was “overwhelmingly Chinese”.

“In 2013, DAP gained 10 MPs from 28 but Umno gained nine seats to total 88 MPs in Parliament. This exhibits the zero sum nature of racial politics in our country,” Choo said in a statement yesterday.

His statement was in response to Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari’s comment that DAP was in the spotlight following a recent survey by Institut Darul Ehsan.

The survey found that nearly two-thirds of Malay respondents in Selangor believed DAP to be a racial party that looked after the interests of the Chinese community.

More than half of the respondents agreed that DAP was anti-Malay and anti-Islam.

Zairil said DAP had to grapple with this pervasive image cultivated by Umno and that DAP had more non-Malay representatives in every tier of legislature.

He said the reason for this was that for the past 50 years, the party had been largely based in urban areas predominantly populated by non-Malays.

Choo said Zairil had admitted that DAP had been historically successful in urban areas but that this success had made the Malay community “cautious” about the party.

“DAP’s failure to balance its policies to be inclusive of rural areas reveals that its myopic policies only serve the agenda of the hardcore urban Chinese,” he said.

Choo said in the last general election, DAP only fielded three Malay candidates out of the 51 parliamentary seats and 118 state seats contested.

“At a success rate of 66.67%, why is DAP not fielding more Malay candidates? Is it to maintain a certain hegemony within the party?” he asked.

He said that in Selangor, which is the most racially diverse state, the DAP has three state government executive councillors and the Speaker of the state assembly.

“However, it does not appear that any of these positions were offered to any of its Malay members.

“In fact, none of its Malay members appear to have run in any of the state seats in Selangor, where 85% of DAP’s state assemblymen are ethnically Chinese,” he added.