TOURISM and Culture Minister Nazri Abdul Aziz said he would fight anyone, including icons like Robert Kuok and Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to defend the Barisan Nasional (BN) government.
“I’m a cabinet member, part of the government that he (Kuok allegedly) wants to bring down, and he’s funding my political enemy. Of course I’ll fight back,” said Nazri.
The Umno minister had called Kuok a “pondan” and dared the business tycoon to contest in the 14th general election following allegations that Malaysia’s richest man is funding the DAP. The allegations originated on blog, Malaysia Today.
Nazri told The Malaysian Insight he did not understand why BN component parties MCA and Gerakan were still insisting that he apologise to Kuok.
“Why should I?” said a defiant Nazri, who is a Umno supreme council member and the Padang Rengas MP.
“Why is it that when I whack Dr Mahathir, 92 years old, why do they never say, you cannot say that, he is iconic? That shows Gerakan, MCA leaders are racists.
“When it is Mahathir they don’t make noise, when Mahathir is more iconic than Robert Kuok.
“I think they want to make it into a racial thing. I think this is a reflection that deep inside they are racists.”
Nazri reminded Gerakan and MCA that he had helped fight Indira Gandhi’s case in the cabinet, referring to the case of a Hindu mother who had spent years in the courts battling to overturn the unilateral conversion of her children to Islam by her ex-husband.
Nazri said he had read Kuok’s memoir containing the tycoon’s criticisms of the BN government.
“Of course he can comment, I also have the right to feel upset about what he wrote about the government; I have been a minister for 19 years now,” said Nazri.
Analysts said in a report by The Malaysian Insight that the BN lynchpin party’s attack on Kuok was a sign of panic as the general election loomed.
MCA Youth said in a statement on Wednesday that Nazri’s crude insults at Kuok and MCA secretary-general Ong Ka Chuan undermined the BN spirit. – March 2, 2018.
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