MH370 Deputy Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Bakri should resign or be sacked for plunging the government and country into greater credibility crisis over the MH370 disaster, said Lim Kit Siang.
The DAP veteran was responding to Abdul Rahim's statement that the Royal Malaysian Air Force did not attempt to intercept MH370 on March 8 because it "assumed" that the plane was ordered to turn back by flight traffic controllers.
"Already, Malaysia is in the eye of the storm not only over the hitherto inexplicable 21-day disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft but the centre of an international hurricane over our crisis management with great distrust that the aggrieved families are not given all the relevant information.
"As a Canadian media specialist has rightly pointed out, in the world of crisis communications, perceptions can be killers," said Lim in a statement today.
In these circumstances of an "international crisis over our crisis management", he added that it is just "unacceptable that we have a bumbling and bungling deputy defence minister who could be so irresponsible and reckless as to talk rubbish."
Abdul Rahim ( left ) had made the disclosure in Parliament on Wednesday but later claimed that his remark had been proven erroneous, and that it was based on his own assumptions.
"Compounding his egregious error in Parliament, Abdul Rahim claimed yesterday that conclusive answers will only be available when the debris from the plane is found.
'Why no follow-up actions?'
"This is another 'rubbish'. Is Abdul Rahim now claiming that unless the black box is recovered, it is not possible to find out why there were no follow-up actions by RMAF when MH370 disappeared from civilian radar but were detected by military radar?" asked Lim.
He said Malaysians are entitled to know why there were no follow-up actions by both the RMAF and Civil Aviation air-traffic controllers in the early hours of March 8 when MH370 first disappeared into the skies, and the answer to this does not require the retrieval of the black box.
"As I have always maintained in Parliament and outside, the MH370 disaster must unite all mankind, not just Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, politics or nationality in the common mission to locate the plane and to pray for the safety of the 239 passengers and crew on board.
"There can be no room for petty politics or differences. At the same time, the crisis should not be used to ignore or deflect the thousand-and-one-questions that have cropped up as a result of the 20-day MH 370 disaster – as up to now, nobody is closer to the answers as to what, how and why the series of disastrous MH370 events unfolded on March 8," he added.
Lim vowed to raise these "burning questions" during a briefing for Pakatan Rakyat MPs on MH370 by acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
