Adding that most households were struggling to get by, Lim said Najib’s remarks reminded him of French queen Marie Antoinette, who was supposed to have said “Let them eat cake” when she learned that the peasants had no bread.
In a tongue-in-cheek response, Lim said the coming polls would be a “quinoa vs rice” fight, which he equated to a struggle between “a clean government and kleptocracy; Najib vs the people of Malaysia”.
“Until Najib’s live session on the 2018 Budget recently, I had never heard of quinoa, let alone of it being in existence.
“I am sure all the organic shops are thanking Najib for promoting quinoa,” Lim told reporters at the Penang DAP headquarters today.
In a question-and-answer session on the 2018 budget at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia yesterday, Najib said he did not eat rice, but quinoa, which was introduced to him by his son.
He said the grain was better than rice as it was high in protein and low in sugar and carbohydrates.
According to Lim, the going price for a 250g pack of organic quinoa at Tesco was RM14.80.
“This means 10kg (of quinoa) would cost RM591.60. However, a 10kg pack of Jasmine Super Special (five percent broken rice) costs RM25.85.
“In other words, quinoa which Najib eats is about 23 times more expensive than rice, eaten by 30 million Malaysians.”
Lim said Najib should heed the words of hypermarket operator Ameer Ali Mydin, who recently said that people did not have money to buy goods as the price of necessities had increased significantly.
“Meanwhile, he (Najib) waxes about eating quinoa and not rice, setting himself apart from ordinary Malaysians, whether in the top 20% (T20), middle 40% (M40) or bottom 40% (B40) groups – setting himself apart as the super top 2% (Super T 2%).
“Najib should pay more heed to the views recently expressed by Ameer… that the country may be seeing rosy gross domestic product growth but consumers don’t seem to have enough money to spend on groceries.
“Perhaps Najib should start distributing quinoa during the election campaign.”