In a fiery speech winding up the Umno Youth general assembly today, he accused online media portals of unfairly portraying his policy speech earlier today as racist.
As a result, he said had been receiving brickbats including claims no one is questioning the position of bumiputeras, the national language, and the monarchy, and Umno is afraid of its own shadow or fear-mongering to win votes.
The
youth and sports minister whipped out his phone to read out a post by a
Twitter user, which purportedly said, "What is the contribution of the
Yang di-Pertuan Agong that they are accorded such an honour?"At least (the late DAP chairperson) Karpal Singh had contributed to the country."
Khairy continued, "why the commotion? When the road in Penang was renamed after Karpal Singh, no one made a fuss out of it."
In contrast, he said DBKL was only changing "meaningless" road names to those of Agongs, who had been heads of state to all Malaysians, but drew the offending social media responses.
Major roads to be renamed
Effective today, eight major roads around Kuala Lumpur were renamed after past and present Agongs, including Jalan Duta, Lebuhraya Mahameru, and a part of Jalan Ipoh.
On Facebook, a public service announcement by a BN official page was greeted with criticism, cynicism and ridicule by netizens.
Among them, some c
omplained that the name changes would be confusing because road users are already familiar with the existing names.Others said other problems like traffic jams on the roads, should be resolved first.
As for his statements on the social contract, which he stressed that it also benefits non-Malays, he said he had seen responses that include ‘I didn’t sign any social contract’ and ‘I don’t agree with any social contract’.
On the online media coverage, Khairy said he is angry and disappointed at the reporting.
He said his statement that vernacular schools should be recognised, and that Umno should be a ‘shield’ to other races - who should be accepted as fellow citizens - were all not reported.
“My (policy) speech was portrayed as racist. Before the general assembly has even finished, our assembly is said to be racist.
“In
my policy speech, I said that Malays no longer question the right of
non-Malays, so we asked and urged for non-Malays to respect Malay
rights. That became a headline, and that is supposedly racist.“The Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, came out with a statement saying KJ (Khairy Jamaluddin) is racist.”
He said all these are part of an agenda by ‘Umno-hating’ media to disparage the party as racist, and urged members to uphold the dignity of their race and religion.
“I have said that if people disparage other races, other religions, we will stand up. Because we are a noble race, if people disparage other religions, we rise, we defend them.
“But when the time comes for us to defend our own race and religion, don’t call us ‘racists’. No way!” he shouted.
Credit in BM proposal
Meanwhile, during debates at the Umno Youth general assembly earlier today, Pahang Umno Youth delegate Mohd Sahar Abdullah proposed that the award of the SPM certificate should need a credit in the Malay language instead of the current requirement of just a pass.
“This
is what we call a Malaysian citizen. This is what we call a citizen of
the Malay Federated Territories. What is the use of becoming a Malaysian
but can’t speak Malay,” he said.The appeal was also made directly to the party deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also the education minister and was in the audience.
“Tan Sri, help me out. I wish to propose that the conditions for passing SPM not only require a pass (in Malay), but needs to be raised to a credit - with the minimum grade of C.”
Earlier today in his policy speech, Khairy had urged vernacular schools to do more to ensure Malay-language proficiency amongst its students.
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