While the people are enraged over the steep hike in fuel prices, the Barisan Nasional (BN) leadership - from top to bottom - appear to be clueless, said a veteran opposition leader today.

In a statement, Parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said it was 'disappointing' that after one week, the prime minister, his deputy and other top leaders still remained in the dark.

They "fail to grasp and address the core of the public outrage and why their calls on the people to change their lifestyle, 'don't be greedy' and 'make sacrifices' fell on stony ground."

"Even more serious, the 4,000 BN leaders who attended the special briefing also failed to understand the root cause of the people's anger and dared not articulate them - as evident in their three-hour dialogue with the prime minister," he added

Lim was referring to a special briefing for BN leaders on the price hike held at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

At the meeting, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi instructed the leaders to explain to the people about the situation in order to curb the growing discontent over the March 1 increase.

One-sided calls

However, Lim said the government had missed the issue at hand.

"The people are angry not so much because there had been an increase, but by the manner, timing and amount of the increase, and most important of all, by the loss of moral authority and legitimacy of the government to call on the people to change their lifestyles and make sacrifices," he added.

The failure of the Abdullah administration to deliver its reform pledge, particularly after winning an unprecedented 92 percent parliamentary majority in 2004, has greatly undermined its moral authority and legitimacy to make this 'one sided' calls, he added.

"Unless Abdullah is prepared to address the underlying anger and outrage of the people at the government's 'cakap tak serupa bikin', then all its info-psy war and molisation of the 4.5 million BN members will be of no avail," he said.

Yesterday, the premier said the lack of information on the government's move to raise the petrol price caused some people not to understand the rationale and the opposition has taken advantage of the situation to criticise the government.

In the rises, the size of which took Malaysians by surprise, the government upped the price of petrol and diesel by 30 sen per litre to about RM1.90 ringgit and RM1.58 ringgit respectively.

Caring government

In a related development, Abdullah today said he was aware that some groups had staged demonstrations here and there to protest the hike in fuel prices and accused the government of not being caring.

"Nobody likes price increases but if we are smart in managing our expenses, God Willing, it will not be too taxing," he said.

According to a Bernama report, Abdullah said the government had not totally withdrawn fuel subsidy.

"Some people say the government has completely withdrawn the subsidy. To people who are not aware or those who want to manipulate the thinking or arouse the people's anger, they say there is no more subsidy, they say the government is no longer caring and so on, but the government is still giving quite a lot of subsidy," he said.

The premier reiterated that enforcement would be stepped up to deter traders from raising prices of goods and services to their whims which could lead to the inflation rate to spiral.

Abdullah also slammed Malaysians who smuggled out petrol and diesel to neighbouring countries to rake in huge profits.

The premier said he was informed that fuel stations at the northern border areas frequently ran out of petrol and diesel whilst the number of vehicles in these areas were not that many.

"Surely, something wrong has happened. Probably, there is smuggling. Who are involved? Malaysians are the ones involved in such activities," he was quoted as saying by Bernama.

"As such, we have to produce oil in large quantities when we are suppose to save its consumption. Give a chance to the people to use the fuel fully, we should not allow petrol and diesel to be smuggled out in big volumes," he added.