ISKANDAR Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang said he has “grave reservations” that former prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin is leading the National Recovery Council (NRC).
This is given the fact that the latter was the one who was responsible “for the losing war against the COVID-19 pandemic, the millions of COVID-19 cases and tens of thousands of COVID-19 deaths”, the DAP veteran said in a press statement on Wednesday (Sept 22).
In a televised interview on Astro Awani on Sept 21, Muhyiddin had said that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob had allowed him to “continue as before”, meaning that he has the same powers as when he chaired the council as prime minister.
While admitting that he did not have a free rein on finances, the Pagoh MP said he felt that the mandate handed to him was “good enough” as it allows him to make immediate decisions “without wasting any time”.
According to Lim, when Muhyiddin became Prime Minister on March 1, 2020, there were 29 COVID-19 cases and zero COVID-19 deaths.
When he resigned as Prime Minister 17 months and 16 days later on Aug 16, 2021, there were a cumulative total of 1,424,639 COVID-19 cases and 12,780 COVID-19 deaths, he added.
“When Malaysia celebrated the 63rd National Day on Aug 31, 2020, Malaysia was ranked 89 among nations in the world based on the total number of COVID-19 cases. But we are now ranked 21,” Lim remarked.
“If there is one person who must assume responsibility for Malaysia becoming one of the worst-performing nations in the world in the war against COVID-19 (over the past 12 months), it is none other than Muhyiddin Yassin.
“We are now told that under Muhyiddin’s premiership, there had been under-reporting of COVID-19 deaths and that there is a huge backlog of corpses in the government hospitals awaiting analysis and post-mortems.”
Lim went on to say that while he had asked Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin to make a Ministerial statement in Parliament on the true position of COVID-19 deaths and brought-in-dead (BID) COVID-19 cases, his request had “fallen on deaf ears”.
“Why is Khairy refusing to give a full disclosure about the true position of COVID-19 deaths in the country?” he questioned. – Sept 22, 2021
