MCA then-president Liow Tiong Lai said that the setting up of Low Yat 2 would only hurt racial relations, and described the proposal for the bumiputra-only mall as an “antagonistic approach”.[50] Fellow UMNO member Saifuddin Abdullah also criticised the proposal, claiming that Ismail Sabri's proposal would be detrimental to Malays and Malaysians in general, and that having commercial sectors divided by ethnicity would be counterproductive.[6]