Najib Should Answer Daim’s Accusation Questioning How Come The Value Of The Ringgit Depreciated So Precipitously And The Bursa Malaysia Performed The Worst Amongst All Regional Stockmarkets If There Was Such Brilliant Economic Stewardship.

Press Statement By DAP Secretary-General And MP For Bagan Lim Guan Eng In Kuala Lumpur On 1.3.2015.

If the Merdeka Centre polling survey is correct, only 18% of the Chinese community as compared to 58% of the Malay community are satisfied with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s performance. The level of Chinese support could have been reduced further if the survey, which was conducted in January, had been carried out this month following Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s racist call on the Malays to boycott Chinese traders with outrageous lies that the Chinese trader were the cause of prices not going down and that the Chinese oppressed the Malays.

Najib should be happy to still get even 10% support from the Chinese community when he had openly allowed such overtly anti-Chinese, racist and extremist sentiments to be expressed by his Cabinet member without being punished. Such racist and extremist remarks by Ismail Sabri antagonised not only the non-Malay community but moderate Malays, who were shocked at such scapegoating to detract attention from the BN Federal government’s failures to manage the economy well.

The economic reality is that key and critical industries like finance, insurance, rice, sugar, petrol, ports, communications and toll highways are no longer in the control of the Chinese but by the Malay cronies of UMNO. This level of 10% Chinese support for Najib shows that there is hope yet for him to claw back some Chinese support, as are some segments of the Chinese community who are so forgiving and submissive that they are willing to let Najib come to his senses by focusing on the economy.

BN’s and Najib’s stark failure to manage the economy is so evident that former Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin openly attacked Najib’s failure as Finance Minister for causing what Daim called an economic crisis. Najib should answer Daim’s accusation questioning how come the value of the ringgit depreciated so precipitously and the Bursa Malaysia performed the worst amongst all regional stockmarkets if there was such brilliant economic stewardship. Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir was even more direct, blaming the economic crisis on Najib’s performance and failure to rein in financial scandals such as 1 MDB, with a mountain of debt at RM42 billion.

The rise in petrol prices by 25 cents today exposes once again the racist lies of Ismail Sabri. Is Ismail going to blame the Chinese traders again for either causing the rise in petrol prices or for not reducing prices? Again the failure of BN, MCA or Gerakan to demand that Ismail apologise is nothing short of disgraceful and shows that BN has run out of ideas and principles on how to run the economy.

Clearly it is policies and principles that matter, not personalities and propaganda about who is more racist and extremist, that will determine whether the Malaysian economy can be nursed back to health. PR and DAP is willing to compete with BN and UMNO not on racism and extremism but on policies and principles about the economy, competency, integrity, rule of law and democracy

LIM GUAN ENG