KUALA LUMPUR: Barisan Nasional has been urged to take disciplinary action against Sungai Rapat assemblyman Hamidah Osman for degrading the Indian community at the Perak state assembly on Friday.
MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu, in making the call, said the party condemned the state assemblyman’s action.
“We urge the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council to take action against her,” he said in a statement here.
Hamidah was reported to have asked Speaker V. Sivakumar if he agreed to disagree with the well-known fable of whether a snake or a man from a certain racial community should be killed first.
However, she retracted her words when Barisan whip Datuk Seri Mohamad Tajol Rosli Ghazali (BN – Pengkalan Hulu) asked her to do so.
“I want her to make a public apology to the Indian community. What she did is most humiliating and not acceptable,” Samy Vellu said, adding that her remarks had angered Indians.
In IPOH, a Tamil cultural group lashed out at Hamidah for uttering racist remarks.
“It’s uncalled for when we are talking about forging a Malaysian Malaysia,” Tamilar Thirunal group adviser M. Mathialagan, 58, said after lodging a police report over the remarks at the district police headquarters yesterday.
Meanwhile, Hindu Action Rights Force (Hindraf) national coordinator R. S. Thanenthiran said the state assembly was the wrong platform for Hamidah if she wanted to act like a “super heroine”.
“We know she’s a very pretty lady but if she wants to be a super heroine, she should go act in a drama instead.
“There is no such idiom anywhere in the dictionary. We ask her, please don’t trouble the Prime Minister with your remarks. He has enough headaches already,” he added.
When contacted, Hamidah apologised unreservedly to the Indian community, saying she did not mean to insult them.
“It’s an old Malay proverb which simply means to not twist one’s words around. I was misinterpreted and it got out of hand,” she said.
Star Online
29/06/08
PEOPLE'S POWER
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