THE Perikatan Nasional–PAS candidate for Rantau Panjang, Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff, has been flagged by a youth group, #KamiNampak for the inflammatory video she uploaded on her official Facebook account.

#KamiNampak monitors the use of rhetoric that incites racial and religious issues on social media by election candidates,

In the November 6 post, Siti Zailah said “Muslims are obligated to vote to ensure non-Muslims do not become leaders as they will ruin Islam.”

#KamiNampak stated it categorises this post as “falsely manufacturing or associating a political, economic or social threat with a racial or religious group”.

The PN-PAS candidate was among four candidates in this general election (GE) to be called out for their use of the race and religion card as campaign tools.

Parti Sarawak Bersatu’s (PSB) Lanang candidate, Priscilla Lau, was called out for the TikTok video she reposted on her Facebook account.

She was recorded saying, “Give us your vote and do not let the foreigners come in to look after our affairs. They have proven that they cannot do it.”

“#KamiNampak categorises this as the use of negative stereotypes of a racial or religious group,” the youth group, which has over 60 youth volunteers monitoring the social media accounts of election candidates in all 222 parliamentary seats,” it said.

The other two are the Pakatan Harapan-DAP candidate for Klang, Ganabatirau Veraman, and Gerakan Tanah Air (GTA) Pejuang candidate for Balik Pulau Fazli Mohammad.

Ganabatirau in an interview with Selangor TV that was aired on November 6, said “the flooding of foreigners is horrible here (Pasar Meru Klang). I’m worried Pasar Meru Klang will become like Pasar Selayang soon.”

The youth group said Ganabatirau’s statement is an “advocacy of hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility towards a racial or religious group”.

Fazli was called out over a November 7 posting on his Facebook account where he shared a post that read: “They worry about Malays slowly shrinking in Balik Pulau and Bayan Lepas constituencies that will be lost from the hands of a Malay majority during GE16 causing the development of luxury condominiums that Malays can only see and cannot buy.”

The youth group categorises that as “falsely manufacturing or associating a political, economic or social threat with a racial or religious group”.

Jason Wee, #KamiNampak’s coordinator, said the youth group urges candidates “to campaign on policies and practices, rather than using race and religion as a selling point”.

“The use of the race and religion card is short-sighted and hurts the ability for different communities in Malaysia to trust each other,” he added. – November 8, 2022.