Former U.S. ambassador snubs Ibrahim Ali's "sick" comments

Wong Choon Mei

Former U.S. ambassador to Malaysia John Malott has declined to be drawn into a verbal punch-up with Malay rights troublemaker Ibrahim Ali, who called him and a prominent economist Zainal Aznam Yusof “sick” for their views on the existing discriminatory practices in the country that they believed boded ill for its economic future.

"I do not want to dignify his remarks by saying anything in response. But I would like to assure my many friends in Malaysia that I am well, both physically and mentally!" Malott wrote in an email reply to Malaysia Chronicle.

This is not the first time Malott and Ibrahim Ali have crossed swords. Last year, Ibrahim staged a noisy demonstration outside the U.S. embassy in leafy Ampang suburb, handing over a memoradum to officially protest Malott for calling his Perkasa outfit a 'militant' group.

Malott (right) led the U.S. mission during the years 1995 to 1998 and still maintains an active interest in Malaysia and her Southeast Asian neighbours. Earlier this week, he wrote an article entitled The price of Malaysia’s racism that was published in the Wall Street Journal.

In it, he warned of the negative social and economic consequences if Prime Minister Najib Razak continued to practise racial favouritism and allowed his Umno party to foist Malay supremacy onto the other ethnic groups that make up 45 per cent of a 28 million population.

Deflecting blame from Najib

Ibrahim, a veteran parliamentary lawmaker from Kelantan with a chequered record, first burst into national prominence about a year ago seeking to defend Malay rights after a court ruled that the word ‘Allah’ could be used by non-Malays to describe God.

He founded Perkasa and staged protest after protest, making inflammatory remarks that deeply angered the non-Malays. Yet he escaped punishment for many of his comments that law experts said were clearly seditious.

That sparked suspicion that he was part of a good guy-bad guy drama staged by Najib and former premier Mahathir Mohamad to cling to power in Umno.

On Tuesday, the 57-year old Ibrahim lashed out at Malott and Zainal, who sits in the National Economic Advisory Council.

In an effort seen as orchestrated to deflect blame from an increasingly unpopular Najib, Ibrahim stoutly defended the political dominance held by the Malay community and also resisted any attempts to withdraw its special economic rights.

"I think there are Malaysians who have asked for his help. There must be people behind him, asking him to give negative views of our prime minister,” Malaysiakini reported him as saying.

“I believe Malott is backed by a Malaysian who is facing a political death, but I will not name names.”

Coincidentally, Zainal had separately blamed Ibrahim and Perkasa for “strangling” the New Economic Model that Najib claims he wanted to launch to replace the race-based and affirmative-action New Economic Policy.

But Ibrahim disagreed the NEP made Malaysia uncompetitive.

“During the time of the NEP, there was so much FDI coming in. Now the dip in FDI is a global issue... even the US has been asking its businesses to invest in their own country. It is not because of affirmative action,” Ibrahim had said in rebuttal to Zainal’s claim that the NEP’s condition of a minimum 30 per cent Malay equity participation reeked of protectionism and deterred investments." said Ibrahim.

Political thuggery and fallacies

Experts and opposition politicians have minced no words, lambasting Najib and the Umno elite of using “political thugs” like Ibrahim Ali to stir racial emotionalism and to scare-monger with barely-veiled threats of violence in an ultimate bid to hide the truth from the Malays.

Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim has often questioned why 96.7 per cent of the poorest Malaysians were Malays if the NEP was so effective. Umno has controlled the country since 1957 and the NEP was first implemented in 1971.

“Malay supremacy is a slogan used by a small group of Malay elites who are cheating the Malays as a whole for their own interests. After 53 years in power, the Malays and bumiputera are still neglected. The 30 percent Malay-bumiputera equity has yet to be met. Of the RM54 billion equity and shares for bumiputera, only RM2 billion still belong to them,” PKR or People’s Justice Party president Wan Azizah Wan Ismail had said in November last year.

Like Malott and Zainal, she too had drawn a tidal wave of anger from Perkasa and other Umno-backed NGOs. A series of police reports were lodged against her, urging the authorities to probe and jail her for sedition and treachery towards her race.

There is some interest on whether Ibrahim Ali will now lead another showy Perkasa protest to the U.S. embassy, and if police complaints will be lodged against Zainal.