The ruling coalition BN needs to meet and reach a consensus decision on tomorrow’s red shirt rally, or else Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak should ban the rally, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang said today.
This is in relation to Najib's statement last night that the coalition's component parties have 'agreed to disagree' over the Malaysia Day rally.
This is unacceptable, Lim said, as the BN chairperson needs to not only respect the opinions of the component parties' leaders, but to also comply with their views in lieu of a consensus decision.
"What has happened to the much-vaunted consensus principle of the ruling coalition, which have been hailed as the key to BN's successes?
"Has the BN consensus principle been abandoned and replaced with what Umno wants and decides, and that the views and stands of the other 12 parties in the coalition do not matter when they clash with the views and stand of Umno?" Lim asked.
Sabah, Sarawak BN parties won't support rally
There is no way the component parties from Sabah and Sarawak could have condoned the red shirt rally, he said, and Najib ignoring their opinions on this matter is a "sign of their irrelevance and impotence in the BN coalition, except to provide numbers to allow Najib to become the sixth PM of Malaysia".
Lim then speculated that if there had been a vote in the BN supreme council on the red shirt rally, the results would have been extremely lopsided at 12-1, with Umno being the sole party to support the rally.
"Why should Umno's one vote prevail over the 12 votes of the other BN component parties if BN is a coalition of equals and not 12 political parties serving one master political party, Umno?" he asked.
This makes it seem like BN is just "Umno hegemony personified", where the views of the other component parties' leaders do not matter, he said.
In light of this incident, Lim said the other BN component parties should ponder the point of the coalition if their views simply do not matter.
The red shirt rally, organised by the National Silat Federation (Pesaka), was given the green light by City Hall to be held at Padang Merbok on Wednesday.
