"Why the preference now by the PM for the less manly weapon of the Sedition Act to fight the opposition?" queried the MP for Ipoh Barat.
Kulasegaran was referring to the spate of charges against opposition legislators filed in the courts the past few days, which the federal legislator said indicated that Najib was "caving in to pressure to flex his muscles in order to show he is not a weak leader."
"In
2012, when faced with a huge gathering of opposition supporters at a
street rally, the PM challenged demonstrators to fight him the manly way
- at the ballot box," recalled Kulasegaran."We can excuse the PM for his pledge in September 2011 to make Malaysia the best democracy, but we can't allow him to forget his challenge to our manliness," he remarked.
"A challenge based on manliness goes to the heart of one's sense of self and with the PM now backing away from it in preference for repression of the opposition through use of a colonial era law, he is saying he has no identity," commented the DAP leader.
"The fact that the opposition has bested the government at the ballot box in the 2013 general election has not acted as a restraint on the PM in his choice of options to fight his critics.
"Najib's sense of manliness has not embarrassed him into a proper humility at his government's loss to the opposition for the popular vote in the 2013 election.
"Instead, more than a year after that rebuke, it seems to have driven him to the desperate option of repression through use of the Sedition Act which is an unmanly thing to do," argued Kulasegaran.
He said the country could no longer tolerate the PM's crisis of self-identity - whether to identify himself as a liberal and a moderate or be a poseur and a masquerade.
"You are either one or the other but PM thinks he can be both and that the people would tolerate his dissembling," said Kulasegaran.
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