KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 20 — DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang today said he assured PKR president Anwar Ibrahim when the two met on Friday, that the DAP leadership never proposed to change the Opposition Leader.
Kit Siang said he did however call on Anwar to unite the Opposition with a new national consensus.
“When I met the Parliamentary Opposition Leader, Anwar Ibrahim, on Friday, I assured him that the DAP leadership had never proposed a change of Opposition Leader, but the Opposition must set forth in a new direction focussing on the need to strengthen and consolidate all Opposition forces in the country through a new national consensus,” he said in a statement today.
This comes after Pakatan Harapan (PH) secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution was quoted by Sinar Harian as saying that efforts to retake the government, through statutory declarations from MPs, would continue after the Opposition lost the vote to stop Budget 2021 from passing.
Saifuddin, in the interview on Friday, also reportedly said that the efforts were not Anwar’s personal decision, but the decision of PH.
Earlier on Thursday, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng and Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) president Mohamad Sabu had called on PH to stop wasting time trying to garner support from
Perikatan Nasional (PN) backbenchers, and instead reset it’s course.
“I am taken aback by the latest statement of the Pakatan Harapan secretary-general as he must speak on behalf of all three parties in the Opposition coalition and not for one political party,” Kit Siang said today.
He added that in order to stop Malaysia from becoming a failed state in 2040, and to counteract against problems highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic — such as cases in Malaysia surging past China, failure to procure vaccines faster than Singapore, and Malaysian students reportedly being left behind due to lack of infrastructure — a new national consensus was needed.
He also said that a systematic campaign of lies had polarised the racial and religious lines in the country.
“This is why there is an urgent need for a new national consensus for the Merdeka Constitution 1957, the Malaysian Constitution 1963, the Rukun Negara 1970 and the Vision 2020 promulgated in 1991 have all failed — to the extent that there are now Ministers in the Cabinet who reject these basic documents of Malaysian nation-building.
“As I said yesterday, time and tide waits for no man and the time for action for a new national consensus is now as Malaysia must be spared the fate and ignominy of kleptocracy, kakistocracy and a failed state in 2040,” he said.
