In case you missed it, on 12 December, former PM Tun Mahathir attended and spoke at the launch of his new memoir Capturing Hope: The Struggle Continues for A New Malaysia.
During this launch, Mahathir said a few things that were deemed incendiary, mostly relating to assimilation.
He spoke up about how the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia don’t identify simply as Malaysians but Chinese-Malaysian and Indian-Malaysian.
He was quoted saying, “They are born here, brought up here, grew up here, but they still link to (their ancestral roots). So this divides the people.
“Because of that (strong sense of racial identity), they cannot be assimilated.”
He continued to criticise the way the Chinese name their children, which led to many netizens scratching their heads.
He said, “Like changing names, for example, China decided to spell names with a lot of ‘X’, ‘Z’, and all…