Anonymous author bags top prize for 'Kit Siang racist' contest

The top prize of RM10,000 for Umno information chief Annuar Musa's 'Lim Kit Siang is racist' writing contest was won by an anonymous author.

The author had written 16 articles on the subject which was compiled into a book titled "DAP Bahaya Kepada Melayu-Islam Di Malaysia" (DAP a danger to Malays and Islam in Malaysia).

The chief of the ten-man panel of judges, Yazid Othman, said many of the contest participants did not want to be named due to "concerns over their safety."

The prize was accepted by someone else on behalf of the author.

One of the six other winners of the contest's article category was an Utusan Malaysia journalist who wrote an interview with Special Affairs Department (Jasa) chief Puad Zarkashi on Lim being a racist.

Utusan Malaysia assistant chief editor Zaini Hassan was among the ten judges for the contest.

Malaysiakini is attempting to contact Lim for his response.

Meanwhile, blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin indirectly won two prizes in the same category, one for an article he wrote, and another for an article published by the "chief editor" of his blog Malaysia Today.

According to the prize list, the six won an honorarium of RM2,000 each.

However, the award ceremony was a messy affair and almost all the winners from the four categories were not present to receive their prize, which were instead received by representatives.

The winners were first announced by Yazid who read out a list of winners without much fanfare.

This was then followed by a mock cheque awarding ceremony. But confusingly, only one of each of the honorarium winners - or rather their representatives - from the four categories were called on stage.

Speaking at a press conference later, Annuar, who was not a judge said many of the winners were not present as the judges only finalised the list yesterday.

"Some of the winners live out (of the Klang Valley) and some, we were not able to notify," he said.

He added that some did not want the publicity.

However, Annuar said he will be contacting them to inform them of their win.

Overall, the prize money awarded to 25 winners totalled RM50,000, which Annuar said was donated by his friends.

Besides the articles category, there was also category for blogs, videos, and infographics.

The RM5,000 top prize for the video category was won by blogger Minaq Jinggo, who submitted a video of former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad calling Lim a racist.

However, besides the top article prize, which was published as a book and distributed at the event, none of the other entries were presented today.

Annuar said the committee in charge of the contest will need to figure out how to publish it, as there were some legal concerns among others.

He did not specify what the legal concerns were.

Annuar had first announced the contest in March in response to Lim branding the Ketereh MP as the “father of racists”.

Yazid said there had been 1,200 entries for the contest, although many did not meet the necessary criteria and standards placed for the contest.- Mkini