Will the PM please speak up, asks Tony Pua
“Malaysians are asking, ‘where is our Prime Minister?’ “
(The Malay Mail)
Datuk Seri Najib Razak is risking his leadership in both Umno and of the country by keeping mum in the eye of a raging storm over his reform proposals, an opposition MP warned today, urging the prime minister to speak up and reclaim the public’s eroding confidence.
Despite leading his Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition to victory in the May 5 polls, the country’s sixth prime minister appears to have ceded government control to hardliners from within his party, Petaling Jaya Utara Tony Pua (picture) said.
“Malaysians are asking, ‘where is our Prime Minister?’,” the DAP national publicity secretary asked, and challenged Najib to rein in the hardliners from his party and prevent them from further wrecking the latter’s plan to make the country the “best democracy in the world”.
Pua noted that Najib has been keeping silent in the face of mounting controversy over a number of his legislative reforms and additional government and economic transformation policies.
He listed the Cabinet spat over an Islamic conversion law and the proposed repeal of the Sedition Act, on top of calls to reinstate preventive detention provisions in security laws as examples of a growing confidence crisis against Najib.
He reminded Najib that Malaysians had granted him the mandate asked for to carry out his “transformation” agenda, but have yet to see any of the promised “radical reforms” that will take the Southeast Asian nation closer to its dream of a first-world country.
Instead, recent statements issued by members of Najib’s Cabinet, namely Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, point the government to be regressing rather than progressing.
“We call upon Datuk Seri Najib Razak to pick up his courage and demonstrate his political will in ensuring that Malaysia remains on the path to reforms and transformation he has promised.
“The problems Malaysians face today will not go away quietly if he were to remain tongue-tied. Instead he will lose not only the confidence of ordinary Malaysians, but even that of his own political party,” Pua said.
Political analysts whom The Malay Mail Online spoke to have also voiced similar concerns, cautioning Najib that he risks going down the same path as his predecessor Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and having his administration being labelled a “flip-flop” government.
