The former senior member of Cabinet said the remarks made by Azran were personal in nature as they were made via the latter’s social media accounts and should not be considered as an official view of the company.
“It was his personal view and it has nothing to do with AirAsia X,” Rafidah said, adding that as far as she is concerned, the issue has never been discussed by the company’s management.
Azran had recently said that Utusan Malaysia is racist for publishing a front-page article entitled ‘Apa lagi Cina mahu? (What else the Chinese wants?)”.
In his Facebook account, Azran wrote: “I am Malaysian. I am anti-racism. I am disgusted by Utusan's editorial stance”.
In his Twitter account, he claimed that Utusan is no longer relevant due to ‘narrow-minded’ stance adopted by the editorial and further said that AirAsia X will pull out its advertisements from the Malay-language paper.
Utusan reported that Azran had tweeted: "Utusan sudah lama tidak relevan. Jumlah pembaca merosot kerana minda pengarang sempit. Utusan tidak mewakili Melayu Malaysia ,(Utusan has long been irrelevant. Its readership had dwindled due to its narrow-minded editors. Utusan does not represent Malays in Malaysia)"
Following this Azran was heavily criticised for being selective as he had not said anything about some Chinese-language newspapers which had published racist contents.
Meanwhile, Rafidah said even though it was only Azran’s personal view, the statement was inappropriate since it involved the company’s policy.
“In this country, people have freedom to say (anything)… but what they want to say should not involve government or private sector’s policy,” Rafidah said further.
Blogger Fatimah Zuhri has questioned Azran’s stance for calling Utusan racist and for being rather ignorant towards editorial slant adopted by certain vernacular papers.
Calling him as the new member of ‘Self-Hating Malay Club’, Fatimah in wrote, with much sarcasm, that Azran should remember how he managed to achieve his current position as someone successful.
“Please tell the gullible Malays the truth (that) you have never received any help from the Evil Darth Vader cum Saruman government which is BN. Tell them that you manage to study at Stanford because of the magical money tree behind your parents’ house.
“Tell them that you became Senior Vice President (Policy & Development) at the corrupted BN owned KLSE because you are super-duper Einstein-like mind, not because Malay (former KLSE Chairman) gave you a chance.
“You did not join ASTRO - a company owned by (former Prime Minister Tun Dr) Mahathir (Mohamad)’s crony. Instead, Utusan Malaysia had cloned you and put your clone there,” she wrote.
Pro-opposition news portals reported yesterday that Azran explained his remarks were blown out of proportion and refused to comment further on the issue.
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