LDP slams Perkasa for teaching intolerance

The party also wants state leadership to take action against a local Umno leader who has been acting as a "little Napoleon".

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Barisan Nasional coalition member, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has ridiculed Malay rightwing group Perkasa for its call to bar non-Muslims from teaching in national schools.

LDP secretary-general Teo Chee Kang said the whole concept by the peninsula-based NGO was shortsighted and against national integration.

He was commenting on a report which quoted Perkasa secretary general Syed Hassan Syed Ali as saying that Muslim leaders in the country were ‘starving’ for Christian votes and as a result had compromised their dignity as Muslims.

Syed Hassan was also reported as saying that as “there are only 9% Christians, why bother with their votes?”

He also reportedly demanded that Christian teachers should not be allowed to teach in national schools.
The open hostility to other communities in the country by the NGO has made many within the ruling coalition uncomfortable and whittled away at their support base.

Perkasa’s call is seen as a direct challenge to the status quo in Sabah and Sarawak where the various religious communities have lived in harmony despite the best efforts of some politicians to drive wedges between them over the years.

“Whatever it is, a democratic country must not allow prevalence of the majority’s interests at the expense of the minority, otherwise democracy would be used as a tool by the majority to oppress the minority,” said Teo at the LDP Tanjung Aru and Petagas joint-annual division conference over the weekend.

“In our multi racial, multi religion and multi cultural society, if all communities are racial supremacists who only care about their own interests and nothing else, we will not lose dignity as Muslims, Christians, Buddists, Taoists or Hindu, but we all will lose our dignity and pride as Malaysians,” said the LDP Tanjung Aru chief.

Umno’s little Napoleon

Teo, who is also Tanjung Kapor assemblyman, further expressed concern that the state BN leadership was not taking any action against an Umno leader in his constituency whom he described as a “little Napoleon”.

“You will recall the incident that eight ketua kampung in Kudat were sacked without my knowledge as the Tanjung Kapor state assemblyman last year.

“After pursuing the matter, four of them were reinstated, one had since passed away, another one was not able to continue his service due to health reason, the other two subsequently obtained my recognition.
“However, the little Napoleon Haji Harun Bidin still sits as the district chief of Kudat.”

“I did raise this issue in the state BN meeting in August last year and was promised that a committee would be set up to handle it along with other issues in relation to political appointments.
“A year has passed and nothing has been done to date.”

“Sometime in June this year, this ‘little Napoleon’ again repeated his stunt and caused the replacement of a Ketua Anak Negeri in my constituency.

“The new appointee is one of his boys who followed him in sabotaging BN in the 2008 general election in Kudat.

“For this little Napoleon to be so arrogant, I think there must be another ‘Napoleon’ protecting him from behind.

“Whoever this ‘Napoleon’ is, if he sees it fit to sacrifice the BN interests for his private pleasure, then he is not fit to be a BN leader.”

Though Teo did not name the other ‘little Napoleon’, he is believed to be alluding to Chief Minister Musa Aman with whom LDP has had a prickly relationship.