Only 2 real moderates in Najib’s Cabinet?

Lim Kit Siang says the rest are either “nominal moderates” or extremists.

KUALA LUMPUR: There are no more than two committed moderates in Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Cabinet, DAP leader Lim Kit Siang declared in a media statement today.

He did not identify the two, but was probably referring to Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin and Tourism and Culture Minister Nazri Abdul Aziz, who in recent weeks have openly spoken against extremist Malay groups.

Lim’s latest statement builds upon his challenge to Umno leaders to state unambiguously whether they support Najib’s Global Movement of the Moderates (GMM) initiative. If they would not, he said yesterday, then they could be classified as extremists.

Today, he issued the same challenge to members of the Cabinet and BN leaders and speculated that apart from the two he mentioned, they were either extremists or “nominal moderates”.

He said this raised the “fundamental question” of how the GMM initiative could have any chance of success.

“I cannot count more than two fully committed moderates in the Cabinet who are willing to take up the cudgel of moderation against extremism and rally behind a coalition of moderates to reclaim their religion and pursue the path to peace,” he said.

“Will Cabinet Ministers who regard themselves as committed moderates in the great battle between moderation and extremism please stand up and identify themselves? This goes for the Umno/BN political leaders as well.”

Lim said the current racial and religious polarisation in the country was the worst in “more than four decades of nation building” and laid the blame on the lack of courage among Cabinet members and BN leaders to stand up against extremism.

He said hate speech and incitement of communal sentiment had become “quite commonplace” because the culprits were spared the “wrath and sanctions” of the law.

He said the first three prime ministers – Tunku Abdul Rahman, Abdul Razak Hussein and Hussein Onn – would be dismayed if they were alive today to see the “sad state of racial and religious relations in the country”.

Lim also speculated that Malaysians might witness “a new climax” in the “denigration and demonisation” of cultural diversity at the forthcoming Umno general assembly.