A university for Sandakan

MP SPEAKS | The Sabah election on Sept 26 is a battle between conviction politics versus money politics, between vision and principles versus self-interests and the “frog” political culture.

Just now, the Elopura candidate for Warisan and the incumbent DAP assemblyperson for the area, Calvin Chong, spoke of his vision for Sandakan and among the things he wants to see is a university in Sandakan.

This reminds me of my call for a university for Sabah some 30 years ago when nobody had advocated it, and now we have a Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) in Kota Kinabalu.

The time has come for a second university in Sabah and Sandakan is the appropriate place for the university to be placed.

I call on the voters in Elopura to vote solidly for Chong to realise his vision of a university in Sandakan, so that Sandakan youths can continue their tertiary education in Sandakan itself.

Sabah is one of the richest states in Malaysia, but poverty here is one of the highest among the states in the country.

Why is this so?

This is because politicians have been misusing politics to serve their own advancement and interests, and not the promotion of the rights and interests of the ordinary people.

Calvin Chong

DAP stands for clean and honest politics. We are committed to fighting corruption of all forms and we have a record of over 50 years since the 60s to demonstrate our consistency and steadfastness in the battle against corruption.

In the 22 months of Pakatan Harapan government from the 14th general election on May 9, 2018, we succeeded in making significant progress in the battle against corruption, resulting in Malaysia gaining the best Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2019 Report in 25 years,

In the TI CPI 2019, Malaysia was ranked No 51 with a score of 53, registering a single-year improvement six points for the TI CPI score and 10 placings in TI CPI ranking, the best performance in the past quarter of a century.

Since the toppling of the Harapan government by the “Sheraton Move” conspiracy in February this year and the formation of a backdoor government, there have been backslidings in the war against corruption, and the MACC has become an instrument of persecution against opposition leaders instead of the vanguard against corruption.

If we had maintained the pace and momentum of the anti-corruption programme of the Harapan government, Malaysia will become one of the world’s top 30 countries in public integrity before 2030.

A solid vote for Warisan Plus in the Sabah polls on Sept 26 will be a loud and unequivocal voice for the restoration of the anti-corruption programme so that Malaysia could be ranked among the top 30 countries in the world in public integrity and the fight against corruption.

But now I dread to read of the TI CPI 2020 Report to be released next January for Malaysia has gone backwards instead of forwards in the battle against corruption.

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LIM KIT SIANG is DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri. - Mkini

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.