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Media Statement          
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Tuesday): In Puchong Indah, Selangor yesterday, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi declared: Support me and I will not disappoint you.

He said the support of the people give him greater sense of responsibility to strive even harder to ensure prosperity, harmony and development without leaving out any group.

Abdullah just don’t get it – that he has already disappointed Malaysians who had given him the greatest mandate ever secured by a Prime Minister in any general election in the nation’s 50-year history in 2004.

Is Abdullah’s denial so serious and even terminal that he is simply not aware of the widespread and deep-seated popular disenchantment over his failure to honour his catalogue of pledges when he became Prime Minister in October 2003 and during the 2004 general election to be the Prime Minister for all Malaysians, to hear the truth from the people however unpleasant, to wipe out corruption and abuses of power, to open up spaces for greater democracy and press freedom and to lead an administration of excellence and meritocracy towards a First-World Malaysia?

I cannot but ask whether the recent spate of unprecedented events had failed to make any impression on him whatsoever to shake off his denial complex - whether the nation-wide pickets of MTUC and workers for fair wage, the March for Justice of the 2,000 lawyers in late September to demand judicial independence and integrity, the 40,000-strong BERSIH demonstration on Nov. 10 for electoral reforms for free, fair and clean elections or the 30,000-strong Hindraf demonstration to end the long-standing marginalization of the Malaysian Indians?

Has the Prime Minister been completely isolated by his Putrajaya Fourth Storey gatekeepers from the people on the ground to the extent that he has totally lost touch with the hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares of ordinary Malaysians irrespective of race, religion or region?

If so, then the country is faced not only with a crisis of confidence in the judiciary, the Election Commission and the various national institutions, but with a national crisis of confidence in the political leadership of the Prime Minister!

Abdullah’s request for another blank cheque from the people, promising not to disappoint the people, after causing the greatest disappointment to the people by any Malaysian Prime Minister in his first four years in office, is very eerie. Is Abdullah’s latest request for real?
 

(18/12/2007)