Father and daughter in public spat over Bersih 3.0
| Harakahdaily, | 10 May 2012 |
May 10: Calling PAS's Unit Amal members as "hooligans", former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad came out strongly in defence of the police force against attacks from none other than his own daughter, Marina Mahathir.
NOT CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK ... Mahathir and daugher Marina in contrasting situations
Reacting to her suggestion that there were more protesters injured than policemen during the April 28 rally for electoral reforms, Mahathir claimed that those injured could have been beaten up by their fellow protesters.
"The demonstrators, too, attacked anyone they thought were watching or recording what was happening,” said the former UMNO strongman, who once shocked the public by saying the black eye' injury suffered by his sacked former deputy Anwar Ibrahim in 1998 could have been 'self-inflicted'. It later turned out that then police chief Rahim Noor had personally assaulted a blindfolded and handcuffed Anwar at the police headquarters in Bukit Aman.
In his letter to MCA-controlled The Star which earlier carried Marina's piece criticising the Home minister and police, Mahathir also specifically referred to PAS's popular welfare brigade Unit Amal, whose members had been tasked with crowd control.
"And there were the 'red shirts', the specially trained hooligans from PAS whose job was to use force," he was quoted by the paper.
But the 86-year old was still a proud father of his first child, saying protesters should have followed her example of not breaching police barriers and going home without being hurt.
"She sat down when she reached the barriers. Had all the demonstrators followed her example, no one would be hurt."
Earlier, Marina lashed out at the government and police, saying their strong reaction to the Bersih 3.0 rally only exposed a similar pattern of behaviour adapted by recently deposed dictators in the Arab world.
"The demonstrators, too, attacked anyone they thought were watching or recording what was happening,” said the former UMNO strongman, who once shocked the public by saying the black eye' injury suffered by his sacked former deputy Anwar Ibrahim in 1998 could have been 'self-inflicted'. It later turned out that then police chief Rahim Noor had personally assaulted a blindfolded and handcuffed Anwar at the police headquarters in Bukit Aman.
In his letter to MCA-controlled The Star which earlier carried Marina's piece criticising the Home minister and police, Mahathir also specifically referred to PAS's popular welfare brigade Unit Amal, whose members had been tasked with crowd control.
"And there were the 'red shirts', the specially trained hooligans from PAS whose job was to use force," he was quoted by the paper.
But the 86-year old was still a proud father of his first child, saying protesters should have followed her example of not breaching police barriers and going home without being hurt.
"She sat down when she reached the barriers. Had all the demonstrators followed her example, no one would be hurt."
Earlier, Marina lashed out at the government and police, saying their strong reaction to the Bersih 3.0 rally only exposed a similar pattern of behaviour adapted by recently deposed dictators in the Arab world.
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