By Lim Guan Eng, Secretary General of the DAP
The terrorist attacks by extremists who have exploited the good name of Islam, has struck fear because the terrorists are targeting at the fundamental base of success of the West – freedom from fear. Freedom is seen by some as an alien value and a threat to the power and status of established groups.
Malaysians must endorse the fundamental value of freedom that helps to create a successful, progressive and prosperous society, as commonly shared by all developed countries. Freedom does not mean absolute freedom but the freedom from fear as well as the freedom to pursue and reward excellence.
Malaysians should rejects extremists who preach hate, intolerance and violence. Instead we must respect the rights and dignity of our Malaysian brothers and sisters who shares the same aspirations of justice, democracy and economic prosperity and suffer the same problems of corruption, abuse of power and discrimination.
Politics should not be about confrontation and exclusion but about collaboration and inclusion. For this reason, good governance play a very important role by implementing good policies that can determine good outcomes and delivery that improves people’s lives.
In the politics of government, winning is about generating good and creative ideas that can capture the imagination for a brighter future. BN and UMNO is losing the future by focusing on appealing to our primordial fears and hate that dehumanises minorities. This politics of hate is intended to avoid real problems such as the 1MDB scandals or RM1.4 trillion in illicit funds flowing out of the country from 2003-2013. Or that Malaysia household indebtedness (87.1% of gross domestic product as at September 2014) is the highest in Asia by the World Bank’s estimates, having ballooned to RM854.3 billion (86.8% of GDP) in 2013 versus RM243.2 billion (67.2% of GDP) in 2002.
Simply, Malaysians must punish bad behaviour and reward good behaviour. Do we want a society where extremism in the defence of race is no vice, but moderation in the defence of justice no virtue?
