KUALA LUMPUR: DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang and Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin have been trading barbs on the micro-blogging site Twitter, over a series of questions that Lim has dubbed an “acid tests” on the 1Malaysia concept.

In a speech in parliament yesterday, Lim posed a series of questions to Cabinet ministers and said their answers would show whether they were sincerely and seriously committed to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia concept.

The questions are:

• Whether he or she agrees to the establishment of an Opposition-headed Parliamentary Select Committee on 1Malaysia;

• Is he or she prepared to declare that the basis of 1Malaysia is “ketuanan rakyat Malaysia” and not “ketuanan Melayu”; and

• Is he or she prepared to endorse the objective of 1Malaysia as defined by the 1Malaysia Government Transformation Programme (GTP) Roadmap to create a nation where every Malaysian perceives himself or herself as Malaysian first, and by race, religion or region second.

On Friday, March 19, Lim said on Twitter, Umno MPs, including Khairy were stumped by the three questions he posed.

“[This is a] sad day for Malaysia after 53 years since Independence. Umno MPs find it so difficult to answer these three acid tests of 1Malaysia,” he wrote on his Twitter page.

In response to that, Khairy slammed Lim for avoiding the question for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s regarding the APCO issue.

Anwar recently claimed the 1Malaysia concept was from APCO Worldwide, an international strategic communications company that was engaged to assist the Malaysian government in strategic communication. The opposition leader claimed that the idea originated from APCO ’s involvement in conceptualising the “One-Israel” slogan for the Israeli government.

DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua stepped in to advise Khairy to direct the question to Anwar instead of Lim, while Lim called Khairy the “Pathetic Umno Youth chief” for diverting attention to Anwar-related matter.

“On Anwar-APCO , I have no information. Let's see who is right, but this cannot justify disappearance after coming on so powerfully righteous until punctured like tyre with no air by three questions,” Lim quipped.

“Pathetic DAP dino who cannot even understand when someone has answered his ‘trick’ question. Better luck next time old man,” Khairy responded on Twitter.

Pua later added that he was proud to be a Malaysian first before considering his race and religion, “unlike all the Umno tools who don’t even believe in their own 1Malaysia rhetoric”.

Unhappy with the term “Umno tools”, Khairy told Pua he had no intention of starting a quarrel with the latter and that he should step aside.

In Lim’s tweets, the DAP man challenged the “Oxford lad” to answer the questions “if he is capable of answering them”, while Khairy called Lim a “revisionist historian as usual”.

Lim continued firing Khairy for being “the world's only Oxford grad who could not answer three simple questions”.

“The supremacy of the Constitution is the basis of 1Malaysia,” Khairy responded the three with an answer.

“Perhaps you no longer uphold the Constitution. It’s like asking a vegetarian to choose between chicken and beef for lunch. False choice. Nice try,” Khairy twitted.

Following the explanation, Lim hurled a fourth a fourth  at Khairy to suppress his “attempt to evade by mouthing generalities about the Constitution”.

The fourth question was whether Khairy would accept a Malaysian Constitution founded on the supremacy of Malaysians and not Malay supremacy.

Khairy responded by saying that Lim was just extending his false-choice question and  he “was getting under Lim’s skin”. He added the crux was that “1Malaysia gets broad-based and multi-ethnic support. Malaysian Malaysia does not”.