August 12 will decide not only further development and prosperity of Penang and other five states but whether Malaysia can rise again as a great world-class nation
(Media Statement by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang in Penang on Thursday, 27th July 2023)
The August 12 state polls will not only decide the further development and prosperity of Penang and the other five states but whether Malaysia can rise again as a great world-class nation.
If PH-BN coalition suffer reverses in the six state polls, Malaysia will return to the trajectory of the last few decades of national decline, losing out to one nation after another and heading towards a sad fate — a divided, failed and corrupt nation.
There will be no reset and return to the original nation-building principles of a plural Malaysia our founding fathers have written into the Malaysian Constitution and the Rukun Negara (which included the first three Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Razak Hussein, and Hussein Onn, who were also UMNO Presidents) — constitutional monarchy; parliamentary democracy; separation of powers; rule of law; an independent judiciary; Islam as the official religion and freedom of religion for all faiths in the country, Malay as the national language and the sustenance and preservation of other languages; special provision for the Malays and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak to abolish poverty and development backwardness and the legitimate interests of other communities; good governance with public integrity and minimum of corruption; a clean and honest government; meritocracy; respect for human rights; an end to the various injustices and inequalities in the country; a world-class economic, educational, health and social system; and national unity, understanding and harmony from our multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural diversity.
Today, the Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim announced the economic vision of his government’s “Ekonomi Madani”, which among others, aims to achieve for Malaysia the top 25th position in the annual Transparency International Perception Corruption Index, which is more ambitious than Abdullah Badawi’s National Integrity Plan (NIP) (2003–2008) which had aimed to place Malaysia among the top 30 least corrupt nations in the world by 2008.
But the NIP was a dismal failure and Malaysia attracted infamy, ignominy, and iniquity, and became the worst case of kleptocracy in the world, and under the premiership of Muhyiddin Yassin, Malaysia fell to No. 61th rank out of 180 countries.
All Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or region, must support the objectives of Ekonomi Madani for a non-corrupt, progressive, and competitive economy which, in terms of nominal gross domestic product, could rank Malaysia as No. 30 instead of the present rank of 35 as the biggest economies in the world, and place Malaysia as the top 12th competitive country instead of the current rank of 27 in the IMD World Competitiveness Index.
Anwar’s Ekonomi Madani also aims to place Malaysia among the top 25 countries in the UN Human Development Index instead of the present rank of 62.
Perikatan Nasional of Bersatu and PAS do not promise to make Malaysia great again but will return to the trajectory of a divided, failed, and corrupt state, and this is itself enough reason for Malaysian voters, thinking of the interests of their children and children’s children, to ensure major victories for the PH-BN coalition in the six state polls on August 12.
