When thousands of Malay Muslims marched through Kuala Lumpur last week to support his scandal-racked government, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak kept his distance.
He neither attended nor officially endorsed the racially charged rally by members of Malaysia's majority community.
But several members of Najib's political party said they helped an ultranationalist Malay group stage the "Malay Pride" rally. Critics accused the organizers of stoking racial tensions in multicultural Malaysia to distract from a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal swirling around the prime minister.
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