Speaking at the launch of his book “Lim Kit Siang – Patriot, Leader, Fighter” by party colleague Liew Chin Tong at Skudai, Johor, last night, he lamented that there were too many negative vibes in Malaysia today.
“There is a sense of apathy, hopelessness, despair and desolation that not much change had taken place in the 22-month Pakatan Harapan (PH) government, forgetting that the PH government was meant to last for five years until it was undemocratically toppled by the Sheraton Move,” he said.
He questioned whether Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s “Keluarga Malaysia” slogan was an empty one, as illustrated by the 2022 budget, which even the former economic adviser of the PH government, Mohammad Abdul Khalid, had said allocated billions to the Bumiputeras over the other communities.
“I worry that the voter turnout in the Malacca and Sarawak state elections may be as low as less than 30%,” he said, adding that the polls were important forerunners of the 15th general election.
On the Covid-19 pandemic, Lim said he would like to see daily new cases drop to double-digit figures and daily deaths to single-digit numbers by the end of Khairy Jamaluddin’s first 100 days as the health minister on Dec 7.
“This is a national crisis of the first order and the first priority of the nation must be to save lives and livelihoods,” he said.
“This was why DAP supported the PH stand to sign the memorandum of understanding with the prime minister – to save lives and livelihoods and to turn defeat in the Covid-19 pandemic into victory.
“We were prepared to put all political, racial, religious and personal differences aside to sign the MoU as we do not want five million Covid-19 cases or 100,000 deaths in Malaysia.
“The MoU has slowed down the upsurge in cases from the daily peak of 24,599 to 4,626, and daily deaths from the peak of 463 to 36, but the deceleration is too slow.”
Lim also spoke about his 57 years of political work and the Malaysian Dream, “which I formulated in my school days in Batu Pahat in the 1950s”.
He also said DAP is a party dedicated to the national interests, “which is why I had proposed political moratoriums for all parties to come together”, in 1969, 1987 and this year.
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