By Lim Guan Eng

DAP challenges Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to prove how BN has delivered real change and progress for the better on fighting corruption, mastering technology and innovation as well as reversing the brain drain to retain human talent. There is no point in Najib talking about real, systematic, organised and planned change when he does not walk the talk.

Where is the slogan “Janji ditepati” or “Promises fulfilled” when:

• corruption has worsened in Malaysia from plummeting from No. 37 in 2003 to No. 60 this year, exemplified not only by the RM250 million “cows and condos scandal” involving the family of the UMNO Wanita head as well as charging the whistleblower PKR’s Rafizi Ramli for disclosing confidential information;

• Malaysia’s global competitiveness has dropped from 21st last year to 25th in the Global Competitiveness Index this year due to lack of technological readiness and failure to master both technology and innovation. Even Jakarta is installing free wifi on its main roads and highways, why not follow Penang’s example of installing free wifi on all public places throughout Malaysia; and

• abject failure of BN’s half-hearted initiatives to not only reverse the brain drain by attracting back the 2 million Malaysians who have left since 1957 to return home but to even retain the best and brightest amongst our young. The time has come to put the focus back into rewarding and creating an eco-system promoting a culture of excellence.

Instead BN under Najib has continued both its extremist racial and religious rhetoric as well as the tactics of  lies, money politics and threats to win votes in the next general elections. On the one hand Najib talks of 1 Malaysia, yet he supports extremist and racist organisations like Perkasa that resorts to hate and violence. Such dangerous and divisive tactics are intended to distract attention away from the failure of BN to fight corruption, as well as their lack of competency, accountability and transparency in governance.

To win the next general elections, DAP must dispel 3 myths and refute 3 lies. The first lie is that Malaysia would go bankrupt if PR wins because we can not afford to deliver all our promises. Our competent performance in the 4 PR states clearly disproves this lie as no PR states went bankrupt, instead recorded large surpluses.

The second lie is MCA’s claims to the Chinese that a PR victory would lead to an Islamic state ala PAS, whilst UMNO lies to the Malays that there would a Christian state ala DAP. This lie by MCA and UMNO is self-contradictory. The clearest rebuttal is that there is no mention of an Islamic or a Christian state in the PR’s common policy.

The 3rd lie is that there would be another May 13 racial riots if there is a change of government. Such threats are intended to frighten non-Malays even though BN and UMNO knows that that a change of government can only happen if the Malay voters desire change as Malays form a majority of voters. The 2008 general elections show that Malaysian voters are mature and there were no racial incidents even though there was a change of state governments in 5 states. As the last 3 Bersih rallies have shown, the desire for clean elections have  strong support from Malays who make up a majority of the peaceful demonstrators.

DAP believes that BN’s reliance on playing extremist racial and religious sentiments will be rejected by Malaysians. Two events give us hope. One is Shila Amzah, the Malaysian Malay singer who won the Asian Wave 2012 singing competition in Shanghai, with one Chinese song beating contestants throughout Asia. Malaysians are proud that a Malay can beat other Chinese singers by singing a Chinese song in front of a Chinese audience. This shows the versatility and capability of Malays to compete at international levels.

The other event is the recent unexpected  victory of the Governor and Vice-Governor of Jakarta, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his running mate, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama. What is unusual is that Basuki is an Christian Chinese. Basuki won the vice-governor post even though his opponent conducted a black campaign by using racial slurs against him. Clearly Indonesians ignored the racial slurs and voted on delivery and performance.

If even a supposedly poorly developed country like Indonesia can put aside racial considerations in favour of perfomance that can improve their standards of living, Malaysians can do better. I believe that Malaysians would choose a change to a new government that delivers on economic performance, prosperity for all and reversing the brain drain and reject an unchanged government that exploits race and religious extremist sentiments to hide its corruption and cronyism.

To succeed, we need to dispel three myths perpetuated by BN. One, that PR leaders can not work together much less co-operate when in power. Two PR is not capable competent in managing the government and thirdly that PR does not have the people’s interests at heart but are only crazy for power.

We need to dispel these 3 myths by BN if PR is to win power in both Perak and Putrajaya. For this reason, PR must stress on the integrity, clean leadership and good governance as well as the availability of capable leaders have resulted in a good performance of the PR state governments. We must institutionalise open tenders and publicly declare our assets to show we have nothing to hide just as PR leaders have done so in Penang.

This is in direct contrast to BN Prime Ministers, Ministers and Menteri Besars who have refused to do so leading to allegations by foreign NGOs that the Sarawak Chief Minister is a billionaire with assets worth USD 15 billion. Why are BN leaders so frightened of declaring their assets unless they have too much assets to declare? BN can only come clean through a public declaration of assets verified by an international audit firm, as done in Penang. – The Rocket