Najib: Has Selangor Pakatan govt fulfilled promises?

PM Najib Tun Razak today urged voters "not to be fooled again" by opposition's promises and asked them to help BN wrest Selangor.

KLANG: Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak today called on the people of Selangor to vote in the Barisan Nasional to form the Selangor government and retain the BN as the federal government in the next general election.

“Do not change the federal government; change the (Selangor) state government; retain the BN in Putrajaya,” he said at the “Ponggal” (Harvest) Festival 2013, here.

Najib said the people of Selangor had heeded the call of the opposition to vote in the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) opposition pact in the last general election, in 2008.

He asked the people of Selangor to assess whether the Pakatan state administration had really solved the problems faced by them, including the Indian community, in the state.

The Pakatan state government had failed to solve many problems in Selangor, such as providing clean water supply and proper waste collection, and had not fulfilled many of its 2008 election promises, he said.

He also said that one of the unfulfilled promises of the current Selangor government was the allowance for single mothers.

“The opposition (government) in Selangor had made all kinds of promises for Tamil schools but there has been ‘illai’,” he said in using the Tamil word for “none or nothing” that had been forthcoming.

Najib said he could list the Tamil schools that the BN had helped and added that besides Tamil schools the federal government had assisted non-governmental organisations, such as the Sri Murugan Centre (SMC), to enhance the level of education of the Indian community.

The prime minister said the people of Selangor had been fooled by the empty promises in the Pakatan election manifesto for more than four years, and dubbed the opposition promises as the “Kampung Buah Pala Promise” because the opposition government in Penang failed to fulfill a promise to the residents of the village in that state that their land would not be taken over by the developer.

“Let’s not get fooled. We can be fooled once, but not repeatedly. Do not insult the intelligence of the Indian community,” Najib said.

Give BN mandate

He said the BN, if given the mandate, would ensure that Selangor would become great and more progressive and successful.

The prime minister said that over the past four years, the BN had provided much assistance to the Indian community, in the form of aid to Tamil schools, micro-credit schemes and increasing the number of Indian students in matriculation courses.

He said that though the government’s  approach to solving the problems of the people, including the Indian community, had changed it could not be said that the problems had been settled.

“It is like a house under construction, whereby the framework has been erected and the government only needs a mandate from the people to complete the house until the objective of Vision 2020 to make Malaysia a high-income developed nation is achieved,” he said.

He gave the assurance that any increase in the national wealth would be distributed to the people.

Najib said every community had been able to eke out a living with government support following the efforts of the BN over the 55 years of its administration.

With the Indians becoming professionals such as doctors, lawyers and engineers, he said, it was hoped that the Indian middle-class would continue to progress while the government would continue to help the Indian workers in the estates.

“It is for this reason that the government is undertaking transformation in terms of delivery and in the social and political fields. In the last four years, Malaysia has progressed a lot,” he said.

Najib said the government focused on all communities and strived to fulfill its promises.

He said the BN needed the support of the people through the 1Malaysia concept and their “nambikei” (trust in Tamil).

The prime minister said his presence along with the leaders of the other BN component parties at the Ponggal celebration showed that the BN was sensitive to the needs of all the people.

“If we attend festivals like Ponggal, we can better understand the people’s aspirations and sensitivities,” he said.

Also present were the prime minister’s wife, Rosmah Mansor, Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister and Selangor BN deputy chairman  Noh Omar; Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department and MIC president G. Palanivel; Deputy Finance Minister and Selangor MCA chief  Donald Lim; Deputy Foreign Minister and Selangor Gerakan chief Senator Kohilan Pillay and PPP president  M. Kayveas.

- Bernama