I congratulate the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) for the commemoration of their party’s 72nd anniversary and 67th annual general meeting (AGM) held over the past weekend.
It has been reported in the press that MCA’s president, Wee Ka Siong, made several references to the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government during his speech.
Among others, he claimed that the PH government was “busy selling off the country’s assets and kept pushing the blame on the previous government, without any plans to develop the economy.”
I find it amusing that Wee Ka Siong had to use PH as the scapegoat to gather support during his party’s AGM. Indeed, this is very similar to the “ini semua salah DAP” propaganda used by his current allies in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government.
It is true that the former PH government faced multiple challenges during its 22-month rule, not least because of several political leaders within the PH government who were blocking reforms and busy plotting for the Sheraton Move. Many of them are now Wee Ka Siong’s colleagues in the PN government.
Yet, Wee Ka Siong and MCA cannot deny the severe economic and political damage that Najib Razak and the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration has caused to the country. Chief among the problems was the 1MDB scandal which happened while MCA was part of Najib Razak’s government.
The PH government inherited these problems when it took over in 2018.
Nevertheless, we managed to push for several progressive reforms and policies, such as the abolition of GST, an 18% reduction in toll rates, the National Fiberisation and Connectivity Plan (NFCP), Malaysian @ Work, and Industry4.0.
On the other hand, Wee Ka Siong and MCA should earnestly reflect on the performance of the PN administration in the past year. In the first place, the PN government is a minority government that did not receive the electoral mandate from the people to rule. The PN government is probably the only government in the world that uses Covid-19 as an excuse to suspend parliament and democracy.
The constant flip-flop on Covid-19 SOPs and preventive measures have made Malaysia among the worst affected country in ASEAN in per capita terms. Till today, many businesses, especially small traders, are suffering from the lack of clarity and direction by the government.
The National Vaccination Programme has finally started, but Malaysia is among the slowest in the world with only 0.35 doses of vaccine administered per 100 people. This ranks 98 out of 122 countries measured globally based on the latest available data.
The PN government has also failed to execute simple programmes such as the promised 150,000 laptops for students, causing hundreds of thousands of students to be stranded without adequate means for learning when their schools are shut down.
In his speech, Wee Ka Siong also called on the Chinese community to “give his party another chance and not put all their eggs in one basket.”
To this end, I think Malaysians should consider giving all the “eggs” to Wee Ka Siong by returning 0 (zero) MCA candidates to parliament in the next general elections.
Khoo Poay Tiong
MP Kota Melaka
