Deliver your pledges to Indians, Najib told

BN may have failed the Indians once, but it can’t afford another failure in today’s rapidly changing political landscape.

GEORGE TOWN: Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak must deliver on his pledges to the long suffering ethnic Indian community, vis-à-vis the Hindraf’s Indian Blueprint, in the forthcoming national Budget 2014, said Hindraf’s Penang chairman K Kalayselvam.

He urged Najib to stop his prolonged delay to deliver on promises made by Barisan Nasional in the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with Hindraf just before the last May general election.

He said the MoU was signed to implement a five-year Indian Blueprint for a comprehensive development of the marginalised Indian community in the country.

He called on Najib to deliver his promises to Indians as how he had announced to deliver a new RM31 billion bumiputera economic empowerment agenda on Sept 14.

“The Prime Minister shall include the agreed allocation in the budget to implement the Indian Blueprint,” Kalayselvam said in a press statement here today.

He reminded Najib that implementation of Indian Blueprint had already been delayed by 163 days since the signing of the MoU on April 18 and 145 days since May 5 general election.

Except for allowing the setting up of a unit in the Prime Minister’s Department (PMD), which is yet to be named anyway, he said 31 of the 32 areas outlined in blueprint remained untouched.

He said Hindraf’s proposal for an organisational structure to implement the blueprint had been rejected as “too elaborate”, while efforts to set up an expert steering committee (ESC) had been delayed.

Worse still, Najib response to questions on the prolonged delays has been a “defeaning silence.”

He called on PMD, among others, to approve immediately the promised organisational structure to establish an expert steering committee (ESC) to kick-start the Indian Blueprint.

He cautioned that any delay in getting the ESC running would jeopardise the budget input for
blueprint implementation and would add another 365 days lost.

“Adding to the already lost 163 days since signing of the MoU, it would be a total 528 days lost,” noted Kalayselvam.

Walk your talk
He recalled that Najib keynote address during the “historical” MoU signing stressed that BN under his leadership would walk its talk on deliverance of all promises to all Malaysians.

In his own words, Najib has then said, “The very fact that Hindraf has made this historic and strategic decision to become a new partner of Barisan Nasional speaks volumes of the kind of change and transformation that Barisan Nasional under my leadership is able to deliver for all Malaysians… I apologise for the shortcomings of the Barisan Nasional government….including… as Mr Waytha Moorthy said, lapses in our delivery for the Indian community.”

Kalayselvam said that Hindraf appreciated Najib’s boldness to admit BN federal government failure to uplift the living standard of Indian poor in the country.

During the general election campaign, he recalled that critics had argued that BN would not honour the MoU and deliver the Indian Blueprint after the general election.

Thus, he warned that Najib had to deliver the Indian Blueprint, failing which lay ethnic Indians trust on BN would be lost forever.

If that happened, he said even Hindraf can never ever win back Indian support en bloc to BN in the next general election.

“BN may have failed the Indians once, but it can’t afford another failure in today’s rapidly changing political landscape.

“Thus, Hindraf now hopes that regardless of the delays, the BN government will deliver the Indian Blueprint hereafter,” said Kalayselvam.