PERIKATAN Nasional (PN) is expecting a low voter turnout among the non-Malay and non-Muslim voters in the Penang state election in August with the coalition’s president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin expressing confidence that PN can win “nearly 20” state seats to garner a simple majority in the 40-seat Penang state legislative assembly.
That is why the PN chairman reminded Gerakan president Datuk Dr Dominic Lau Hoe Chai at the PN Convention that PN needed only 21 seats to garner a simple majority in Penang and asked Gerakan to get the additional 1% of the votes to wrest control of Penang.
Gerakan’s role in PN is to get that extra 1% of the votes for PN to form the Penang state government.
I call on the Penang voters – Malays and non-Malays, Muslims and non-Muslims – to create history in the state polls in August by voting with a higher turnout than the 14th and 15th General Elections (GE14 and GE15) to grasp the once-in-a-century opportunity for Malaysia to be world champions again.
Malaysian voters recorded an 82.3% voter turn-out in GE14 in 2018 which fell by 8.2% to 74% in last year’s GE15. Can Penang voters create history by having a voter turnout of more than 82.3%?
PN wants Penang to be like Kelantan but DAP and the Prime Minister (PM) Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government want Kelantan to be like Penang where the water pipes produce clean water and not teh tarik water.
But to make Kelantan like Penang is not a work of a year or two but a decade or two, hence a start has to be made.
We want Malaysia to be world champions again in as many fields of human endeavour as possible, but we do not want to be ”world champions” like when Muhyiddin was PM from March 2020 to August 2021.
Under the Muhyiddin’s administration, we were among the “world champions” and among the top 30 countries with the highest number of COVID-19 casualties – in fact, we were ranked No. 20 in the world for COVID-19 deaths at one time.
We were also “world champions” as we were the only country which suspended Parliament and allowed the government to commit gross abuses of power as well as corruption.
But this is not the “world champions” we want Malaysia to be as we should be ashamed of such worldly “feats”.
This is what the state election in Penang and the other five states in August is all about – whether Malaysia will become a divided, failed and rogue state in the coming decades, especially by Malaysia’s Centennial in 2057.
I believe that Malaysian voters want the country to be world champions again and a role model to the world for inter-ethnic, inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-civilisation dialogue, understanding, tolerance and harmony.
We want to have a best political, economic, educational, health and social systems – not a country with most casualties when there is a global pandemic.
Therefore, we must have a higher voter turnout in the state polls in August than in the GE14 and GE15 because we must think of the future of the nation and that of our children and children’s children! We must not allow this once-in-a-century opportunity to be world champions again to be missed. – June 23, 2023
Veteran lawmaker and retired DAP supremo Tan Sri Lim Kit Siang was the former MP for Iskandar Puteri.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
Main pic credit: Penang Property Talk
