Lim Kit Siang

Fatal mistake for Pakatan Rakyat parties to assume that the Kajang by-election is a walkover with Anwar as candidate

The Prime Minister and the Barisan Nasional Chairman Datuk Seri Najib Razak said yesterday that the Barisan Nasional (BN) is going into the Kajang by-election as the underdog but pledges to work doubly hard to ensure the best possible outcome.

It will be a fatal mistake for Pakatan Rakyat parties to assume that the Kajang by-election is a walkover with Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as the candidate.

It is imperative that the Pakatan Rakyat parties of PKR, PAS and DAP speak with one voice and act as one unit not only to secure victory for Anwar in the by-election on March 23, but with a convincing majority greater than the majority won in the 13th general elections on May 5, 2013.

Every vote in the Kajang by-election must be fought and won and not taken for granted.

The Kajang by-election will be contested by MCA, which is holding an extraordinary general meeting tomorrow.

The first thing the new MCA leadership of Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and Datuk Wee Ka Siong must explain, whether to the voters of Kajang or to the people of Malaysia, is why they had fully supported the stand that MCA should stay out of the Cabinet in three MCA general assemblies – in 2011 and 2012 and the EGM in October last year, and are now doing a somersault.

Will the new Liow-Wee MCA leadership apologise not only to the Chinese in Malaysia but to all Malaysians for this disgraceful and dishonourable “attempted blackmail” of the Chinese voters in the 13GE which failed miserably, and a second apology for changing their stand after three MCA general assemblies, exposing their utter lack of principles and being fully steeped in political opportunism?

(Media Statement in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, 22nd February 2014)