Calling for a fresh Malaysian nation-building process, the Iskandar Puteri MP said a new consensus was urgently needed to make Malaysia great again and not condemn it to become the “Venezuela or Zimbabwe of Asia.”
He said the current extremely toxic development was engineered by Umno and its allies during the reign of Pakatan Harapan (PH) to make Malays believe that their rights, dignity and future were at stake unless the party was returned to power.
“Malays were fed with fake news that PH was nothing but a DAP government and the then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was a stooge of the party. They even blatantly lied that DAP was anti-Malay, anti-Islam, anti-Sultans and had a communist ideology.
“As a result, the nation morphed into a battlefield of Malaysian politics vs Malay politics, polarising Malaysians even further,” he said in a statement today.
He said in view of the heavy political toxicity in the nation now, there was a need for an honest commitment from all quarters to steer back the nation into the right path.
“If the Malays fall hook, line and sinker to these lies, falsehoods and fake news, all Malaysians, whether Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Ibans and Orang Asli, will be the victims.
“We can only become a world-class nation if we leverage on our unique position as the confluence of four great civilisations in the world. It is never too late for a reset of nation-building policies,” he said.
Lim added that if the policies of Malay politics and hegemony had succeeded in the past 50 years to uplift the Malay masses, many ordinary Malays would not be so poor and insecure today.
“For obvious reasons, there are those who do not want a new national consensus for Malaysia and are doing their utmost to sabotage its birth.
“I met Anwar Ibrahim on Friday and assured him that the DAP had never proposed a change of opposition leader. But I did say the opposition must move in a new direction to consolidate all opposition forces through a new national consensus,” he said.
Lim urged the government leaders to heed a call by a group of 25 prominent Malays comprising former top civil servants, judges, ambassadors and scholars, to speak up against extremist and intolerant voices that appear to be dominating these days.
“Unfortunately, no one listened to this Malaysian call six years ago,” he said, adding that it must be revisited to be used as a basis to rebuild the nation and make it great again.