‘Penang will remain with Pakatan’

A former Penang MCA Youth leader says winning back Penang is too huge a task for Barisan Nasional.

BUTTERWORTH: A former Penang MCA Youth leader chief Eng Hiap Boon feels that Barisan Nasional does not have any chance of taking back Penang from Pakatan Rakyat.

Eng said it was too huge of a task for BN as the “sentiments” since 2008 do not favour them.

Eng said that while Pakatan was no great administrator and chief minister Lim Guan Eng seemed to be fighting everybody here, BN continued to lose support because it has no second generation of leaders to carry on with its cause.

“Their own young leaders were not given a chance previously and many either gave up the struggle, or joined Pakatan, ” he said.

The BN old guards are embroiled in their own infighting until they have forgotten about the presence of a second or third echelon of leaders to continue with the struggle, Eng said.

“Politics is a never ending struggle. And the elderly politicians must know that when the time comes to exit, they should go and become honorable statesmen. Leave the struggle with the younger leaders. Unfortunately, many in Malaysia do not realise a need for this.”

“In Penang, it is not because Pakatan or Lim are great, it is because BN is even weaker. And given a choice between these two evils, voters here would opt for the lesser evil, which is Pakatan,” Eng said.

Eng, who is now a deputy president of the Bakti Nusa Malaysia Foundation, said from his neutral standpoint, Pakatan has a strong grip on Penang because of the national issues which has impacted on the mindset of many fence-sitters.

“People are fed up with misgovernance. Scandals such as the National Feedlot Centre and the Port Klang Free Trade Zone have rocked BN. It has taken a toll on the voters and they no longer want to tolerate such poor leadership. Neither do they want a racist agenda.” he said.

Pakatan has done nothing in comparison to BN’s nation building trackrecord and it is only riding on the core weaknesses of its opponents, he said, adding that the alliance is not as strong as Lim would like to portray Pakatan to be.

Earlier this week, Lim caused a stir here when he predicted that Pakatan only needs 40% of the Malay votes to win the next general election in Penang as well as urging the voters to deliver BN a big zero, meaning no seats here.