Agriculture Minister Ismail Sabri’s urging for a Malay boycott of Chinese businesses over the latter’s alleged refusal to lower prices in tandem with reduced fuel prices is the clearest sign yet of the extent of racial toxins infecting the country’s leadership, claims a DAP leader.

“Even if one looks at it charitably as an unintended error, one is forced to acknowledge that our climate is so suffused with racially toxic elements that a minister not previously known to dabble in race has submitted to the infection,” said MP for Ipoh Barat, M Kulssegaran.

“This is the clearest sign yet that what we have long viewed as a spreading affliction has now become a contagion,” added the DAP national vice-chair.

“The episode marks a new low in the any gauge of existing race relations,” said the lawyer.

“The truth is that most traders, be they Chinese, Indian or Malay, have not lowered prices consistent with the drop in fuel prices.

“Prices of goods in the market place are not so elastic that they fall with every plunge in the cost of fuel,” he commented.     

Kula described as “rant-like” the justification espoused by Ismail in a Facebook posting on why Malay consumers should boycott Chinese businesses that he said do not reduce prices in tandem with reduced fuel prices.

“He has ranted like a fire-breathing street corner speaker, he has singled out people indiscriminately as oppressors, and he has lumped a whole group as victims - all too suddenly a previously mild mannered minister has morphed into someone worse than Ibrahim Ali,” lamented Kulasegaran.

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