Speech By DAP Secretary-General And MP For Bagan Lim Guan Eng During The DAP Perak State Committee Political Retreat In Cameron Highlands On 12.1.2022
Released in Ipoh On 13.1.2022
The 15th General Election Manifesto will be one of the critical success factors to determine whether we succeed in forming the next government. We must not only uphold and defend the fundamental rights in the Federal Constitution but also provide reforms to correct the abysmal failures of the current Federal government in handling the four national crisis of COVID-19 pandemic, the economic recession, the national flood disaster and fighting endemic corruption in government and abuses of power in the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).
There is no doubt that we can do a better job than the present government in managing and overcoming these four national crises. When PH was in government for 22 months, we had taken concrete steps to implement the 14th General Election Manifesto that would have been fully implemented if given the opportunity to fulfill the five-year mandate.
Unfortunately, former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s remarks that it was difficult to fulfill the promises in the Manifesto overshadowed real progress made in implementing them. One example is abolishing the North-South Highway toll by taking the first progressive step to reduce the toll rates by 18% on 1 February 2020. Mahathir had even threatened to sack me as Finance Minister over my persistence in pursuing and pushing for the first stage toll reduction.
Despite the threats, we continued to press and finally succeeded in getting Cabinet approval with final agreement by Mahathir to reduce the toll rates by 18%. That is why it is important for us to complete the job by including in the future Manifesto of abolishing the toll rates as promised and more importantly fulfilling the Malaysian promise of respecting each other, accepting everyone as a Malaysian and rewarding those who work hard towards shared prosperity for all.
There is no doubt that DAP has consistently proven our competency and integrity in handling government procurement and fighting corruption. We need to communicate better that DAP stands for good governance by fighting for the rights of every Malaysian regardless of race, religion and background.
