The Tourism Ministry has announced that it is withdrawing its memorandums of understanding signed with the five states held by the Pakatan Rakyat. It is the same pattern that we have seen with the ‘Wang Ihsan’ when the state of Terengganu fell to PAS.
May I say that such attempts to sabotage and strangle the state governments willonly create greater resentment amongst the people who had voted the Pakatan Rakyat into government?
The ministry stated that certain individuals would be appointed to run the tourism activities in these states. My first question is: Wouldn’t the people ask, ‘Why only certain individuals?’
Having lived in Kepong in Kuala Lumpur all my life, I have seen how the DAP has a strong foothold in this constituency, and I fully understand why the people would never vote for the Barisan Nasional government.
Allow me to elaborate. As residents, we pay our assessment rates to the Kuala Lumpur City Hall. The member of Parliament of Kepong, Dr Tan Seng Giaw gets not a single sen out of this – yet, he has continued to serve the people.
From my conversation with certain DBKL officials, I have come to understand that they have been boycotting Seng Giaw for many years, hoping to throw him out of Kepong. As if rubbing salt into the wound, even among Barisan supporters, there were people who were jibing me, ‘The reason for your woes is because Kepong is under the DAP’.
Newspaper reports have always trumpeted the contributions made by a certain component party of the Barisan Nasional towards the people of Kepong. Do you think people believe in these reports?
When I look back at the history of the constituency, Barisan was voted in only once in all 12 elections. Despite of what it claimed to be projects implemented by the Barisan government in those days, why did Dr Tan Tiong Hong still lose to the DAP?
Think about it. Voters are no longer as na V ve as they were 20 or 30 years ago. Attempts to sabotage, or to pick on each another and trying to play up sensitive issues will only cause voters to lose respect for the leaders.
So, Yang Berhormat members of Parliament and state assembly persons, please listen to the people’s voice. There must be good reasons why they have voted in the Pakatan Rakyat to power, and if both the federal government and state government representatives cannot learn to respect each another, then the next general election could prove fatal for the Barisan Nasional.
The only way to go is to move forward, learn to respect each another and work harder to prove yourselves as worthy of your titles as ‘Yang Berhormat’. By all means, fight it out in Parliament, but do not continue to sabotage each other.
In retrospect, I have every respect now for Gerakan acting president Dr Koh Tsu Koon for his willingness to step down and hand over the administration of the state government to his successor, Lim Guan Eng. And, for Lim, because he has been a gentleman in the way he approached the federal government and reacted to the police’s probe into his NEP statement.
This, in my opinion, is a positive step in boosting the people’s confidence in the newly formed Penang state government and a step closer to a more mature democratic government. Investors will also have more confidence in the country, instead of going elsewhere with their bags of money.
