by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Penang on Monday, 16th March, 1992:
Let the air of democratic responsibility and accountability blow through the MPPP and end the cult of secrecy of Municipal government.
DAP demands that the MPPP should end its cult of secrecy and let the air of democratic responsibility and accountability blow through the MPPP, whether it be the MPPP full Council meeting or its various sub-committees.
The secretive, undemocratic, unaccountable and irresponsi¬ble manner with which the MPPP had operated in the past is the root cause of the triple ills of the MPPP namely its ‘decadence, impo¬tence and inefficiency’ as publicly diagnosed by two Ministers, namely Dr. Lim Keng Yaik and Anwar Ibrahim.
The scandal of the four-minute MPPP full Council meeting last Thursday has highlighted the gravity of the MPPP disease of ‘decadence, impotence and inefficiency’, and revealed that it is even more serious than generally believed.
It is already bad enough that the MPPP full Council met for only four minutes to deal with the multifarious problems of 600,000 people on the Penang island. What is worse, the MPPP President and the 24 MPPP Councillors did not realise that what they have done is scandalous and the height of local government irresponsibility.
This is why there is one MPPP Councillor who dared to publicly justify and defend the scandal of the four-minute MPPP full Council meeting.
I am not interested in this MPPP Councillor, for the people of Penang knows his ‘weight’. In fact, this MPPP Councillor had publicly admitted that he is incapable of ‘great things’.
What the people of Penang are interested is how the new MPPP President, Tan Ghim Hwa, and the
other 23 MPPP Councillors could justify such scandalous and irresponsible local government action.
Can Tan Ghim Hwa and the other 23 MPPP Councillors promise the people of Penang that they will henceforth take their responsibil¬ities and the problems, needs and aspirations of 600,000 people on the Penang island seriously.
Nobody can claim to be serious and irresponsible if the Municipal problems of 600,000 people on
Penang Island could be dis¬missed in four minutes.