Talk by DAP organizing secretary Mr. Lim Kit Siang, at a public meeting at the Banir Local Council Hall on Tuesday , 2nd July 1968 at 8p.m. The meeting at Banir is organised by the Tapah DAP Branch. Banir is in the Batang Padang constituency in Perak.
Alliance leaders are now getting more and more frequent in their warnings about the grave financial crisis facing Malaysia.
A month ago, the Finance Minister, Tun Tan Siew Sin, warned that Malaysia was facing the worst financial crisis since Merdeka, and that “cash was running out with time” for the country.
Yesterday, his Political Secretary, Mr Bernard Lu, returned to the same theme in Batu Gajah.
Actually, Tun Tan Siew Sin had under–stated the financial crisis in Malaysia. Because cash has already ran out in the country.
Under Tun Tan Siew Sin’s financial charge, Malaysia has fallen from a rich and prosperous nation into a debtor nation. Under Tun Tan Siew Sin, Malaysia went into the red, introduced deficit budgeting and had to join the long queue of international beggars with the Ministers visiting advanced countries with begging bowls.
The cause of Malaysia’s financial crisis was the Alliance’s wasteful financial policy. The monuments of Alliance financial folly, waste and stupidity is everywhere for all to see – the multi – million dollar projects like the Parliament House, the Subang International Airport , the Angkasapuri TV and Broadcasting Complex, the Wismaputra ,the Subang Golf Course, the National Mosque, the National Monument, etc.
The Alliance leaders and Tun Tan Siew in particular, are the architects of Malaysia’s present financial crisis.
Instead of admitting their follies, and mending their ways, the Alliance leaders are looking around for scapegoats to pay for their sins. A favourite whipping horse is the government unions. Public servants are denounced for asking for wage revisions, when a section of them have not received wage revisions for a decade, thus leading to a drop in their purchasing power because of the rise in the cost of living.
The government squandered away the nation’s resources and wealth, and now want the government servants to pay for their sins.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, even went to the extent of equating continued demand for wage increases as “disloyalty”.
How the pressing for wage increase can be equated with “disloyalty”, only Alliance leaders can understand.
But if we are going to pursue the logic of Tun Razak’s statement, then the most “unpatriotic” and “disloyal” Malaysian must be Tun Tan Siew Sin – the architect of Malaysian financial crisis!
There is also a tendency to blame the general public for the present financial plight of the country.
Mr.Bernard Lu, for instance, said in Batu Gajah yesterday that to solve the present crisis, the people must show “their spine character, guts and gumption.”
Where was Mr.Bernard Lu’s “spine, character, guts and gumption” for the last eleven years when the Alliance government embarked on a wild spending spree, and wasted away the hard-earned cash of Malaysian citizens?
Men with “spine, character, guts and gumption” would have resigned in disgust at the Alliance’s wasteful policies. We have people however who go round urging the people to show these qualities, when they themselves have never proved that they possess them.
Malaysia wants leaders who can set the example, and not men who do not themselves practise what they preach.
The basic question is whether the Alliance government has the will and resolution to break away from its mentality of waste and extravagance, and set in the spirit of frugality and austerity.
It is doubtful that Tun Tan Siew Sin can preside over the new policies that will be necessary to get Malaysia out of the red. He should resign or be asked to resign, for the good the country and the people.
Ministers in other countries had to resign for lesser failures. Again, will the Alliance party have the “spine, character, guts and gumption” to demand such a drastic step?
Audited on 2021-03-19.