GE13: Appraisal time for BN

The rakyat are the bosses of the government of the day and will evaluate its performance when the polls are called

COMMENT

If you are the owner of a small stationery shop, what do you do when the dispatch rider consistently turns in a below-par performance and displays a lousy attitude year in year out? Why, the recalcitrant worker will surely be given the boot after a severe warning letter has been served and it is the same situation when the general election comes around.

We, the rakyat are the boss of the government of the day and we will evaluate the government’s performance when the polls are called. In the previous general election in 2008, we have served the BN Federal Government a severe warning letter telling them to pull up their socks or else they will be sacked.

However, it looks as though we are going to extend their service again because just before appraisal time, the BN Government has the cheek to bribe us (the boss), with RM500, a half-hearted apology and lots of promises to improve.  If this were to happen in our organisation, I’m sure we will still give the errant employee the boot. Imagine the worker trying to bribe the boss to extend his service! And this is what the BN Government is doing to the rakyat.

What sort of a worker is this?! Time and time again, BN has begged us to give them a chance and we have complied but they have always failed to keep their word. That is their only consistency – always failing to improve after promising to do so and their performance lately has gone down the drain as they have also siphoned off the office funds by dipping their hands into the cash box.

If you are the boss of the organisation, for sure you will fire the lousy worker and have him replaced and this is what we should be doing in regards to the BN Government. Enough of nonsense. Just boot them out! And here is the Report Card as the Parliament session for this year will commence from March 12 to April 12. Going by the momentum on the ground, it looks like this will be the last session before Parliament is dissolved.

Among the issues the Opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) MPs will try to bring up are:

1 Cattle-Condo Saga (National Feedlot Corporation)
2 Minimum wage
3 1Care Health Scheme
4 Lynas Advanced Material Plant (LAMP)
5 Kinrara-Damansara Expressway (KIDEX)
6 Six Tamil schools that the BN Government has promised to build
7  Genetically-modified mosquitoes
8  Listing of Felda shares

The phrase ‘try to bring up’ is used as many times the PR MPs are not given a chance to ask questions and therein lies the difficulty. Below is a quick run-through on the issues.
First of all, the Cattle-Condo Saga which is undergoing a ding-dong process as the investigation papers are being pushed back and forth between the Attorney-General’s Chambers and the police. Is this a delaying tactic so that the rakyat will forget all about this issue? The Pakatan MPs will press for quick action to be taken. Look at what has happened to the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) issue – lost at sea. One by one, the BN Federal Government buries the contentious issues as over the course of time, these said issues will be lost in the mists of antiquity.

1Care Health Scheme

The second issue listed above is minimum wage which is certainly going to be a hot issue. When Pakatan Rakyat announced the minimum wage figure of RM1,100 in their Alternative Budget presented on Oct 4, last year, the BN leaders had a good laugh and mocked the said figure as being too low by laughing at Pakatan’s so-called inability to govern. Now the BN Government’s figure is below RM1k. What a joke! As usual, the underdog worker gets a raw deal. There has to be a win-win situation for both employers and workers and the Pakatan MPs have proposed that the BN Government must also assist the employers in providing a fair wage.

The third issue, the 1Care Health Scheme is shrouded in mystery. 10% of a private sector worker’s fixed salary will be deducted monthly for 1Care. This is a sort of health insurance for major illnesses. But what happens if the money is not utilised at all by a healthy person? The Pakatan Rakyat MPs will press the Health Minister to reveal more details of this Scheme. As it is now, DAP’s Serdang MP, Teo Nie Ching has already requested for more information from MCA’s Liow Tiong Lai who is the Health Minister but so far he has remained evasive.

The fourth controversial issue is Lynas. The BN Federal Government failed to refer to the rakyat before approving this project. What happened to the slogan of ‘People First’ which has been much-touted by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak? Anyway, if the Lynas plant is such a healthy project, why wasn’t it set up in Australia in the first place as it is after all an Australian company?! The PR MPs will urge the BN Government to shut down the plant – there will be no compromise on this as the health and safety of Malaysians are at stake.

The fifth issue is whether the Kinrara-Damansara Expressway which is a project costing more than RM2 billion has gone through the normal and transparent awarding-of-tender procedures.

The sixth issue concerns the building of 6 Tamil schools where even the project board has yet to be put up. There is no sign of this and it still remains as a promise yet to be fulfilled by the BN Federal Government who is still recycling this promise.

The seventh issue is one that continues from last year when PKR’s Gopeng MP Dr. Lee Boon Chye requested for more information pertaining to the genetically modified mosquitoes that is supposed to devour the aedes mosquito. Dr Lee’s question was only given a vague answer and it is the right of we, the rakyat to know whether these genetically modified mosquitoes will endanger our health.

The listing of Felda shares will be handled by PAS MPs who know this issue very well. The BN Government wants to go ahead with the listing while the Pakatan side wants to block it. The BN Government has informed the Felda settlers that once the shares are listed, they will receive a windfall. But the Pakatan MPs have informed the settlers that they will lose their land and therefore their future generation will be landless. And the windfall may not be as big as it is made out to be after all the calculations are taken into consideration.

Most of the time, the BN MPs in Parliament fail to answer the questions posed by the PR MPs. A check on the Hansard will reveal that Umno MPs are the ones mostly guilty of this crime as all they do is attack the Pakatan MPs while praising the BN Government sky-high.

It is high time we the rakyat show the government who is the boss. Instead of being bullied by the lousy and under-performing worker, we must get him replaced so that the country can get back on the right track. As it is, we are already running out of time.

Selena Tay is a FMT columnist