KUALA LUMPUR: Gerakan has criticised former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for questioning the loyalty of the Indian community in Malaysia.
Party president Datuk Dr Dominic Lau said such comments should not come from someone who, at one point, championed the Wawasan 2020 vision for the country.
He said Gerakan previously held a meeting with Dr Mahathir to express dissatisfaction regarding the latter's controversial statements during the Pulai Parliamentary by-election where he declared political parties led by non-Malays as immigrant parties.
"Gerakan believes that such statements from someone seen as a statesman are very offensive.
"The government should advise him not to continue sowing differences that could break the spirit of the Malaysian nation that we have built all this time.
"The people must unite, accept the fact that this country is built together on the foundation of unity, and the seeds of understanding and kinship that we plant today will one day blossom into shared prosperity," he said in the statement.
He added that Gerakan will raise the matter of Dr Mahathir's remarks in the next meeting with Perikatan Nasional this week.
It was previously reported that during an interview with a Chennai-based Indian satellite television channel Thanthi TV, Dr Mahathir said Malaysian Indians and Chinese are not completely loyal to the country as they still want to identify themselves with their respective countries of origin.
He also stood by his previous remarks that Malaysia belongs to the people who founded the country.
"There are people who consider themselves (as) Indians or Chinese. They do not speak the local language at all.
"They have their own schools, their own language, their own culture.
"So, they are different from the original people who founded this country," he said during the interview, which was uploaded to Thanthi TV's YouTube channel on Jan 11.