KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 4): DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang said the six state elections to come will be a crucial test whether Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s Unity Government will have political stability to last for five years.
In a statement on Tuesday (Jan 3), Lim said Selangor, together with Penang, Negeri Sembilan, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu, will be having their state elections in the next few months.
He said DAP must ensure that the state elections in Selangor, Penang, Negeri Sembilan, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu are a solid vote for five years of the Unity Government, for the country has an arduous journey in the last third of Malaysia’s first centennial to stop the national decline from a first-rate world-class nation to a second-rate mediocre country, and Malaysians do not want the country to decline further to end up as a divided, failed and kleptocratic state on Malaysia’s centennial in 2057.
The former leader of the opposition said the nation’s decline and deviation from the original nation-building principles had become so serious and blatant that people who do not accept the original nation-building principles in the Constitution and the Rukun Negara could become ministers in the country, and even become the PM, even though it was through the “back door”.
“[Tan Sri] Muhyiddin Yassin approached me in 2016, after he was sacked from Umno and before Bersatu was formed, for DAP to back for him to become the PM.
“I declined, as DAP was committed to naming Anwar as the PM-designate of Pakatan Rakyat, but the thought of the terrible idea of a ‘Malay-first’ becoming the PM of plural Malaysia entered my mind,” he said.
The octogenarian said Muhyiddin’s failure to bring the Covid-19 pandemic under control was his great failure as the first “back-door” PM of Malaysia, but it was his 2010 statement as the deputy PM that he was “Malay first” and “Malaysian second” that was the worst statement in his political life.
“Anwar’s Unity Government must honour the human rights of Malaysians to freedom of expression, to criticise the Government based on facts and figures, but it must be firm against the extreme, divisive and toxic politics of lies, fear, hate, race and religion, because they could destroy plural Malaysia and tear up the Constitution and the Rukun Negara,” Lim said.
