LIM Guan Eng today ripped into the ministers in the federal cabinet, branding them as incompetents “who will cause Malaysia not to be competitive and remain stagnant”.

The DAP chairman and Bagan MP said the “best gift” these incompetent ministers, especially those from PAS, could give to Malaysia was to leave and let competent ones take charge. 

The repercussion of their failure to leave, he said, is that more of Malaysia’s regional neighbours would surpass us. 

Lim was especially critical of Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Religious Affairs) Idris Ahmad, saying that he “brings no value in performing his duties apart from threatening national unity and disrupting religious harmony” and accused Idris of indulging in “shaming the Muslim victim of sexual assault who goes public”. 

He said Idris was also seeking “to interfere and disrupt the lifestyle, customary rights, and cultural practices of non-Muslims”.

“Such moral policing does not bring any discernible benefits or improvement in public accountability with corruption still prevalent or better governance with poor delivery of public services where even clean water is still lacking. 

“Instead, Malaysia pays the price for being seen as extremist and racist,” he said. 

Concurring with University Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Mohamad Agus Yusoff’s recent statement that PAS was perceived as always thinking it was right by riding on religion and performing poorly in governing its states, Lim gave Malaysia’s education system as the best example of what had become stagnant while its neighbours breezed past. 

“Education Minister Mohd Radzi Md Jidin best summed up the performance of the current government by acknowledging that the Malaysian education system has been stagnant due to unwillingness to make changes, leaving other countries to surpass Malaysia in terms of education.” 

 The former finance minister was pointing to a recent statement Radzi had made where he said “we are not falling behind, we just basically got stagnant, we’ve just been static, we don’t move”. 

“While other countries keep going through, keep changing, keep making improvements to the system, that’s why they went past us.”

Lim said that while Radzi did not mention the countries that surpassed Malaysia, he believed Radzi was referring to Vietnam and Thailand.

“The government should not blame others and everyone else except themselves. They should look in the mirror and realise that they are part of the problem.”

Despite their political rivalry, Lim had sympathy for Transport Minister Wee Ka Siong who he said “fell into the PAS well of incompetence” with a piece of “fake news” on the helicopter that crashed in Bidor yesterday.

Lim said PAS had told Wee that the helicopter pilot was found alive, which Wee went on to announce. 

Wee then had to backtrack on the announcement when he tried to correct the facts by saying the pilot was initially found alive but later succumbed to his injuries. 

It was still not good enough to extricate himself from embarrassment when the police said the pilot was found dead at the crash site.

“How can Wee do his job if he cannot even get his facts right?” Lim asked. – September 13, 2022.