By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Penang on Saturday, 14th March, 1992:
The services provided by the MPPP are below that expected by the Penang ratepayers and worse than when Penang had an elected Municipal Council.
It is time for the MPPP President, Tan Ghim Hwa and the 24 appointed MPPP Councillors to explain why they have absolutely nothing to say at the full MPPP Council meeting on Thursday, resulting in the four-minute MPPP full Council scandal! Surely Tan Ghim Hwa is not going to say that he has
nothing to say why he had nothing to say in the MPPP full Council meeting on Thursday!
Is it really because Tan Ghim Hwa and the 24 MP’PP Council¬lors not only have no ideas as to the needs, problems, expectations and aspirations of the 600,000 people on the Penang Island?
Or is it because the new MPPP President and the 24 MPPP Councillors are so lacking in vision, imagination and ideas as to how to make Penang the model of a modern and civilised city in the region and the world in the 21st century?
Tan Ghim Hwa and the 24 MPPP Councillors cannot expect the 600,000 Penang Island ratepayers
and the 18 million Malaysians to believe that at the first MPPP full council meeting chaired by the new
MPPP President, the Council had absolutely nothing to discuss about the urban problems of 600,000 Penangites that the whole meeting could be wrapped up in four minutes.
Is there going to be four-minute State Assembly and four-minute Parliament meetings after the four minute MPPP full Council meeting?
If this is the mentality and psychology of the new MPPP President and the 24 MPPP Councillors,
then very soon there will be those who will be advocating that there should also be four-minute State Assembly and four-minute Parliament meetings!
The four-minute MPPP meeting scandal is the greatest piece of proof why the nominated Municipal Council system is such a failure and disaster – resulting in what two Ministers, Dr. Lim Keng Yaik and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim bad described as the triple MPPP ills of ‘decadence, impotence and inefficiency’.
It is unthinkable that the new MPPP President and the 24 MPPP Councillors have absolutely nothing to say at the MPPP full Council meeting last Thursday.
Apart from the ten issues which the DAP had proposed in the past three weeks that the MPPP should seriously consider at its first full Council meeting, there are many other areas and subjects concerning
the responsibility of the MPPP which should have engaged the long, deep and ever heated discussion,
of the MPPP Councillors last Thursday.
Some of these big issues close to the hearts of the 600,000 people on the Penang island include:
1. The services provided by the MPPP are below that expected by the Penang ratepayers and worse
than when Penang had an elected Municipal Councils;
2. What is the result of the one-year campaign by the MPPP after the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri
Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, had condemned Penang as ‘the dirtiest place in the country’?
3. What is the MPPP doing to ensure that Penangites enjoy a satisfactory quality of life, with no more littered areas, clogged drains, traffic jams, flash floods, river, sea and air pollution and outbreaks of epidemics?
4. The poor public transport system on the Penang island which is one of the greatest scandals and failures of the appointed MPPP Council.
The MPPP would not be ‘blind, deaf and dumb’ if there are DAP members on it.
If the MPPP full Council does not know how to prepare its agenda of meetings and to feature outstanding problems and expecta¬tions of the 600,000 people on the Penang Island, the Penang DAP is prepared
to provide free consultancy and advisory services to the MPPP.
After the four-minute MPPP full Council meeting scandal, the people of Penang and Malaysia now
know what the MPPP would be a very different Council if there are DAP members in it, for it would then be a Municipal Council which is attuned to the problems, needs and aspirations of the people and not one which is ‘blind, deaf and dumb’! May be this is the reason why the Gerakan State Government is so opposed to restoring an elected MPPP.