MP SPEAKS | Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin is expected to announce a new targeted movement control order (MCO) that will adversely impact our recession-hit economy, following the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government’s failure to contain the worsening Covid-19 situation.
As of noon Jan 9, a total of 542 people were reported to have died with a cumulative 133,559 Covid-19 infections.
Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said he feared that the worst is yet to come, predicting 8,000 infections daily at the earliest in March or the latest by May.
Instead of paying full attention to the suffering of the people caused by the worsening Covid-19 situation and the floods in the East Coast, Muhyiddin is now in political survival mode.
With Umno's Machang MP Ahmad Jazlan Yaakub’s public withdrawal of support for Muhyiddin, the PN government has officially lost its parliamentary majority as of yesterday with only 110 MPs out of 220.
We appreciate our frontliners who risk their lives to protect us, but the same cannot be said for PN government leaders obsessed with endless politicking.
That is why it is important for Muhyiddin to announce mass testing tomorrow, especially to improve the healthcare system’s ability to handle testing, tracing and treating (3T) of Covid-19 cases.
Muhyiddin must also apologise and provide full accountability for his government’s blunder and incompetency in securing early delivery of vaccines. The excuse of not having a paltry RM2.1 billion to purchase the vaccines early, causing its late delivery by two months, is unforgivable and unacceptable.
How many more lives will be unnecessarily lost due to this two-months delay?
Will Muhyiddin and his cabinet come clean and bear full responsibility for all the unnecessary lives lost?
More importantly, any new targeted lockdown measures must be accompanied by an additional RM45 billion economic stimulus package to compensate the people for PN’s abysmal failure in handling the Covid-19 crisis.
An economic stimulus package is critical following the loss of confidence by foreign investors both in and outside Malaysia.
Malaysia's sovereign credit rating was downgraded last month by Fitch Ratings from A- to BBB+, the same level as Indonesia and the Philippines.
Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz was criticised recently by business leaders after he made a posting about the level of foreign investment in Malaysia last year and investors’ confidence in the country.
Zafrul was immediately repudiated by Sven Schneider, the chief executive of the European Chamber of Commerce and Christian Angell Isaksen of Collectr Sdn Bhd, chief executive of a Kuala Lumpur-based online shopping and e-commerce site.
For foreign investors in Malaysia to openly and publicly criticise the finance minister is extraordinary and almost unheard of.
The economic situation must be pretty dire for foreign investors to make public criticism openly.
For this reason, if Muhyiddin intends to announce a targeted MCO, he must alleviate the negative financial impact with an additional stimulus package of RM45 billion to inject funds and confidence into our economy.
LIM GUAN ENG is Bagan MP, former finance minister, and former Penang chief minister. - Mkini
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.