DAP rubbishes Utusan's 'bean' story

DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang found himself rebutting yet another claim by UMNO mouthpiece Utusan Malaysia, this time about a so-called 'Red Bean Army' said to be maintained at RM15 million annually.

“All these are modern-day fairy tales completely without one iota of truth in them!” said Lim, adding that he had only learnt about 'RBA' from the right-wing paper several days ago.

“I have not heard of the term before,” added Lim.

According to the paper, which frequently bases its reports on anonymous blogs, 'RBA' is a six-year old cybertrooper team to fight pro-BN comments on social media websites. Another UMNO mouthpiece News Straits Times meanwhile reported that opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had used RBA to 'incite hatred'.

Lim chided the immediate response by Home minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi to the RBA story. Zahid had called for an immediate probe on RBA for violations of social media laws.

“How much I had wished that the police, the Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and Malaysian CyberSecurity had identified the culprits and cleaned up the racism and poison spewed by UMNO-BN cybertroopers on the Internet during the 13th general elections,” said Lim, who won the Gelang Patah seat in the May 5 polls.

During the GE13 campaign, cybertroopers on UMNO paylist had accused the DAP of sparking the May 13 racial riot in 1969, in a familiar attempt by the BN to scare away voters.

But Lim stated the party could not afford to pay any cybertroopers, unlike UMNO which used hundreds of millions of public funds to engage 10,000 cybertroopers, he added. -HD