“What task, you ask, is so overwhelming it beats a Malay melodrama?
“For this, we need a team that is ‘bersatu’ (united), not bit actors in a bad Malay melodrama,” Tariq wrote in a Facebook post today.
The “task at hand”, he said, was “fighting for the country and the rakyat, fighting for truth and justice, and last but not least, fighting for the future of our children and future generations”.
“And while we encounter issues of legacy behaviour from past associations, the grassroots are coming together and focused on the task at hand, not on the melodrama.”
Tariq was referring to the recent furore surrounding PPBM Wanita member Anina Saadudin after she was allegedly linked to a “sexting” scandal.
Screenshots of an intimate WhatsApp conversation, allegedly between her and an unnamed man, were posted online.
Anina, formerly of Umno, shot to fame after her scathing speech against Umno president Najib Razak at the party’s Langkawi meeting last year.
This followed reports that Najib had received RM2.6 billion in his private bank accounts, money he said was a donation for Umno from the Saudi royal family.
Anina was subsequently sacked by Umno in September last year.
Tariq, who is the grandson of former deputy prime minister Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, urged his fellow party members not to be caught up in the “elitist melodrama of greed for power and wealth”.
“We get so caught up emotionally that we fail to uphold our principles in this struggle.
“We have let the greed for power to govern seep into our consciousness and become our new Malay values, distorting our beautiful culture.
“We have deliberately chosen to forget the raison d’etre for all this politicking of late – to save this nation from itself,” Tariq wrote.
Tariq said the current situation pointed to how “the Umno version of distorted Malay values has seeped through society”.
“The relentless drive for Ketuanan Melayu has created a generation of self-aggrandising Malays tooting their own horns, giving rise to the Tok Dengki (spiteful) and Cik Puan Celupar (big mouthed) of this world.
“No doubt some of the Tok Dengki and Cik Puan Celupar will make their way into PPBM. “