Hamzah Zainudin, Malaysia’s Grinch this Christmas

Hamzah Zainudin, Malaysia’s Grinch this Christmas



This week, opposition leader Hamzah Zainudin staked his claim as the country’s Grinch when he submitted his entry for Embarrassing Political Moment of the Year with his reference to a shadowy news item alleging that the prime minister is a homosexual.

It was an immature and primitive attack on somebody who had done nothing to provoke him.

Parliament should be a place for MPs to debate the issues affecting the people who voted for them, not a stage for juvenile attacks. Perhaps Hamzah mistook the Dewan Rakyat for his local playground.

One has to wonder how he came upon the Agenzia Nova article he cited. Does he have Google Alerts turned on for “Malaysia+MP+gay”? Does he regularly read obscure Italian publications that even Italians haven’t heard of? Has he been a closeted Europhile this whole time?

This being Hamzah’s first time truly in the spotlight, having spent much of his career bumping his head into a glass ceiling at Umno and Bersatu, perhaps it proves why he never got his time in the sun before. Who else would use his first outing as the face of the opposition to probe into sexual preferences rather than the government’s plans and policies?

Perhaps what’s most troubling is that he’s in this position at all. Perikatan Nasional’s surprisingly strong election results suggest large swathes of the country agree with people like Hamzah. Already, PAS and Bersatu have appeared more willing than ever to weaponise racial and religious issues. And it doesn’t look like they’re at risk of losing supporters over it.

If Malaysia ever hopes to be taken seriously by the rest of the world, this sort of behaviour cannot be tolerated. Just look at how quickly and publicly companies and governments denounced the human rights record of Qatar during the World Cup.

The last thing Malaysia needs is for our positions on causes espoused by the liberal international media to come under the same scrutiny. As much as we’d like to think we’d fare better than Qatar, that’s probably wishful thinking.