By Lim Kit Siang
MALAYSIA has become almost a kakistocracy when the Cabinet is not bothered about the country’s performance in the COVID-19 pandemic or unconcerned about corruption and lack of professionalism in the police force.
The Cabinet had two historic challenges yesterday; firstly, whether it will advise the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to convene Parliament to spearhead a national mobilisation campaign to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control by Malaysia Day which falls on Sept 16, 2021 and to be a better performer on the world stage in combating the COVID-19 pandemic; and secondly, whether it will set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on police integrity and professionalism and to turn the Malaysian police into a world-class police force?
However, the largest Cabinet in the Malaysian history failed to rise to the historic challenges as the Cabinet proved to be a historic failure and turned Malaysia almost into a kakistocracy.
Yesterday was the 19th day the daily new COVID-19 cases registered below the 2,000 mark while the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia continued as one of the longest COVID-19 waves in the world with Malaysia struggling to bring it under control by reducing the daily new COVID-19 infections to triple digits and then to double digit figures.
Right now, we are fighting against time.
In Brazil, medical experts are wrestling with the question whether a new COVID-19 variant is infecting more young people and making them sicker. This is unlike in the earlier stages of the pandemic when the elderly made up the majority of those who got infected and died from COVID-19 virus.
Meanwhile, it was reported yesterday that the proportion of the adult population in Malaysia who registered on the MySejahtera app for COVID-19 vaccination only increased by 2.36 percentage points over the past week.
According to data released by the Special Committee on Ensuring Access to COVID-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV), only 26.56% of the Malaysian population aged 18 and above have registered as of March 23 to get vaccinated, just up by 2.36 percentage points from 24.2% population coverage as of March 17.
At this rate, it would take about 30 weeks for all adults in Malaysia to sign up on MySejahtera for COVID-19 inoculation.
But the Cabinet was not bothered about these issues although the February 2021 Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking placed Malaysia as No 23 (out of 53 nations), lower than Singapore (3), China (6), Taiwan (7), South Korea (8), Japan (9), Thailand (10), Hong Kong (13), Israel (14), UAE (15), India (16), Saudi Arabia (17) and Vietnam (18).
In addition, the revelations by Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Bador are not run-of-the-mill incidents and a Cabinet which is indifferent to them shows how kakistocratic Malaysians had been reduced to, as there is no trust, excellence or ethics to talk about in the governance of the country.
It is now left to Malaysians to save Malaysia from becoming a kakistocracy after derailing the nation from kleptocracy in the 14th General Election (GE14). – March 25, 2021
Lim Kit Siang is the MP for Iskandar Puteri.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
