Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjong, Lim Kit Siang, at a Sandakan DAP Ceramah at Sanbay Hotel, Sandakan on Saturday, September 24, 1994 at 8 pm.
Sabah Barisan Nasional Government of Sankaran Dandai has failed its election promise, particularly its 100-day promise, when it is coming to 300 days.
The Sabah Barisan Nasional Government of Sankaran Dandai has failed its election promise, particularly its 100-day promise, when it is coming to 300 days since it unethically and undemocratically toppled the PBS state government elected by the voters of Sabah.
The power supply problem in Sabah, particularly in Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu, are even worse than before the Barisan Nasional Government of Sankaran Dandai.
The most serious critique of Sankaran Dandai as Chief Minister is that he is afraid to make decisions and have to pass up all matters to the Federal Government in Kuala Lumpur, causing a lot of delays, inconveniences and hardships.
This raises the question as to whether the people of Sabah has a Sabah state Government, or a branch of the Federal Government in Sabah!
If Sankaran Dandai cannot make decisions without referring to Kuala Lumpur for directions, then he should ask the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, to appoint a special officer from the Federal Government to be seconded to the Sabah Chief Minister’s Office whose sole responsibility and power is to make decisions on Sankaran Danda’’s behalf, without having to refer them to Kuala Lumpur!
Call on Sandakan Dandai to list out the achievements of the Barisan Nasional State Government after six months.
Sankaran Dandai should list out the achievements of the Barisan Nasional state government after six months in office especially as it had promised Sabahans glorious First Hundred Days of Barisan Nasional State Government!
I believed that if Sankaran Dandai sets out to list his government’s achievements in its first six months, he would find that he has very little to say!
There is a great gap between the Barisan Nasional election promises and the actual achievements in the past six months – and this is one reason why there is major disenchantment with the Barisan Nasional State Government among the people of Sabah.
MCA should close shop in Sabah when it could not even trust a single Sabahan to head the Sabah MCA.
I understand that a Sandakan MCA leader who aspires to be a candidate in the next general elections had issued a statement declaring that I am not welcome to Sabah, alleging that I could only cause greater disunity among the Chinese in Sabah.
This shows the mortal fear of the MCA, not only in Peninsular Malaysia, but also in Sabah, for the DAP.
However, this Sandakan MCA leader has been ‘barking up the wrong tree’.
Everybody in Sabah knows that the Chinese in Barisan Nasional parties in Sabah are fighting like ‘cats and dogs’, Whether SAPP, Sabah MCA or LDP, not for the rights of the Chinese in Sabah, but for the ‘spoils’ of government, like appointments as local councillors, contracts, titles, etc and currently allocation of parliamentary seats for the next general elections.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Chinese in government in Sabah had never been so disunited as today – and this has nothing to do with the DAP.
The MCA should actually close shop in Sabah, as it is at irrelevant and marginalised in Sabah as in Peninsular Malaysia.
It is a crying shame that the MCA leadership has so little trust for the Sabah Chinese that it could not find a Sabahan to head the MCA Sabah, and has to appoint Dr. Fong Chan Onn to head the MCA Sabah.
The Sabah MCA should know that having Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik as the national leader is no great asset at all. In fact, Liong Sik today has become a national laughing-stock being the only Transport Minister in the world qualified to enter the Guinness Book of Records with six fires at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in two years, two goldbar robberies at the airport cargo complex and three ‘near-miss’ collisions, between two aircrafts on the airport runway.