“I have instructed my lawyer Mr Karthigesan to issue Charles with a letter of demand offering him the opportunity to publicly apologise for his personal remarks and attacks against me.
“If he fails to apologise, I will take him to court to give him an opportunity to prove his malicious, false and unfounded allegations before the court of law,” he said in a Facebook post today.
He said he would also write to DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang to complain about Santiago’s “unprofessional conduct and personal attack”.
He said he had admired Lim, who is currently Gelang Patah MP, since he was 15 when he read Lim’s book titled “Time Bombs in Malaysia”.
“Charles Santiago may have conveniently forgotten the history of Indian support to his rise to be a Member of Parliament,” Waythamoorthy said.
On Sept 3, Santiago had claimed that Waythamoorthy’s move to sign a memorandum of understanding with Barisan Nasional (BN) under its chairman and prime minister Najib Razak, leading to him being eventually made a deputy minister in the prime minister’s department in 2013, had not endeared him among the Indians.
“As I recall most Indians were opposed to him joining the cabinet,” Santiago had said.
He said although Waythamoorthy resigned from the position later, it had already broken the trust between him and the Indians.
Santiago also said he did not agree with Hindraf’s alleged stance that only an Indian-dominated outfit can look after the interests of Indians in Malaysia.
“While I do agree that the Indian representation is lacking in the federal opposition, the responsibility of addressing the aspirations of the Indians remains with all parties,” he said.
“In fact, it’s the onus of every political party in the country to address the needs of the poor, marginalised and disenfranchised,” he added.
Santiago had said this in responding to Hindraf secretary Muniandy Ponnusamy who had the day before claimed that the organisation’s participation in Pakatan Harapan (PH) would make the grassroots Indian electorate more comfortable with the notion that their interests would be protected under the coalition.
Muniandy had also called on Santiago not to be arrogant in his views on Hindraf and how it could help the federal opposition in defeating BN in the next general election (GE14).
Muniandy was referring to earlier comments attributed to Santiago on Sept 1 where the latter said Hindraf was no longer relevant to Indians due to “major compromises” made by the movement’s leaders over the years.