Not everyone in DAP is extreme now, says Dr Mahathir Mohamad in clarifying remarks he made two weeks ago, adding that party veteran Lim Kit Siang and his son Guan Eng have changed.
The former prime minister told Malaysiakini that both leaders had been “quite extreme” during his first tenure as prime minister.
“DAP realised that without the support of the Malays, they cannot win. So they opened DAP to the Malays. Meanwhile, for the Indians, they have already been in the party.
“So there are Malays in DAP, and because of this, we see that DAP has become more moderate,” he told the online portal.
But the Langkawi MP named party leaders like P Ramasamy and Ronnie Liu as among DAP members who were still very extreme.
“They are not willing to be accommodative at all,” he said while acknowledging that there were always extreme and moderate members in every political party.
Liu recently came under fire over remarks made which he said were misinterpreted, with Hannah Yeoh and Tony Pua training their guns on the central executive committee member.
He had reportedly said DAP could not depict itself as a non-Chinese party and that it did not need to “dilute its Chinese-ness”.
On April 4, Mahathir said he found that DAP could “sometimes be extreme”, having worked with the party in Pakatan Harapan.
DAP leaders disagreed with Mahathir’s remarks, with Guan Eng saying it was “wrong, baseless and misguided”. He argued that the party’s history was proof that DAP was multiracial and sought to represent all Malaysians regardless of race or religion. – FMT