DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang said today that the failed Kinabalu Move to topple the Sabah chief minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor, shows the fragility of the government headed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
“Malaysians are relieved that Kota Kinabalu Move to topple the Hajiji government has failed – although it is a salutary reminder of the fragility of the Anwar unity government and the overriding need for political stability for the next five year for Malaysia to start anew to become a first-rate world-class plural nation,” said Lim.
The latest from Sabah shows that the move for the Barisan Nasional (BN) in the state to withdraw support from the government is yet to be discussed by the BN supreme council.
At least this is what PBRS president Datuk Arthur Joseph Kurup said, according to the Daily Express.
Kurup added that the party has yet to take a stance on the matter and will do so after receiving the details once the meeting is held.
“We will wait until we have been called for the BN Supreme Council meeting,” he told the Daily Express on Saturday (Jan 7).
Meanwhile, Hajiji is believed to have the support of just over a simple majority of 40 assemblymen in the 79-seat House. GRS has 29 assemblymen, followed by seven from Pakatan Harapan, five from UMNO, and one to three other assemblymen.
A joint statement was issued by Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) president Datuk Seri Dr Maximus Ongkili; Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (STAR) president Datuk Seri Dr Jeffrey Kitingan; Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) president Datuk Seri Yong Teck Lee and United Sabah National Organisation (USNO) president Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia, who said Hajiji remains the chief minister of Sabah and any media statements by political parties have no effect from a legal point of view.
Nonetheless, Lim stated that the Kota Kinabalu Movement served as a vaccine to strengthen Malaysians’ resolve that they have had enough of plots and counter-plots in Malaysian politics and that what Malaysia requires is political stability for the next five years in order to undo the wrongs and abuses of the previous six decades of Malaysian nation-building, which had reduced Malaysia to a second-rate mediocre country.
“We have deviated from the original nation-building principles of the nation’s founding fathers who stressed the paramount importance of unity of diversity in Malaysia’s multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural society, where we promote ourselves as ‘Instant Asia’, to be ‘a beacon of light in difficult and distracted world’.
“It is most significant that neither Bersatu nor PAS, the two main parties in Perikatan Nasional, has ever acknowledged the national decline of Malaysia after six decades of nation-building, where we have not only lost out economically to Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam, but are losing out to Indonesia, Thailand and even Cambodia.
“We have spent two-thirds of our first centennial falling from a first-rate world-class plural nation to become a second-rate mediocre country, and we do not want to spent the last third of our first centennial in 2057 to become a divided, failed and kleptocratic state,” he said.
He added that the greatest challenge facing Malaysia is to rebuild a country that is a world-class plural nation again.
“For this work to begin and succeed, we need political stability for the Anwar government to right the wrongs of the past and end the abuses of power which has brought Malaysia down from a right-rate world-class nation to a second-class mediocre country.
But we need the unity in diversity of the plural Malaysian people to rebuild Malaysia as a world-class nation and not the toxic politics of lies, fear, hate, race, and religion to polarise the diverse Malaysian people.
“May be this is the ‘unity’ which the Anwar government must construct first to rebuild Malaysia to be a world-class plural nation.”
He also asked if PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang would apologise for wild and baseless allegations levelled against the DAP, accusing it of being anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist, and promoting Islamophobia.
“The first thing that must be done is to end the toxic politics of lies, fear, hate, race and religion and make it a criminal offence to tell lies and falsehoods relating to race and religion.
“Will the PAS president apologise for wild and baseless allegations against the DAP, accusing the DAP of anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist and promoting Islamophobia?” — Jan 8, 2023
