The Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government is facing a life-and-death threat with a high-powered Umno-BN conspiracy to topple it at all costs and restore Umno-BN rule in Selangor as in Perak six months ago.

This is not an ordinary challenge but a no-holds-barred onslaught and take-no-prisoners assault mobilising all available means and resources, including the most unethical and illegal, whether at state or national level, whether government or outside like the mass media, to destroy the Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government and cause the break-up of Pakatan Rakyat.

DAP and Pakatan Rakyat leaders in Selangor and in the country should be fully aware of this latest life-and-death threat to the 17-month-old Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government as testified by two pronouncements by the two top Umno leaders today.

In Perth, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said Pakatan Rakyat will be “history in a year” while in Kuala Selangor the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak declared that he wanted “Selangor back in Barisan Nasional’s fold” as the state is the “heartbeat of the country”.

Najib should answer whether he wanted “Selangor back in BN” so badly that he is prepared to resort to both “fair and foul means” even to countenance the most unethical, undemocratic, illegal and unconstitutional measures like the illegal coup d’etat in Perak in February this year?

In Selangor, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has been unleashed, not to declare war against corruption as is the intent of Parliament, but to declare war on the Selangor Pakatan Rakyat Excos and Assembly members.

There is already one casualty, the mysterious death of DAP political aide Teoh Beng Hock at the MACC Headquarters on July 16.

Will the true causes and circumstances of Teoh’s mysterious death at MACC ever be uncovered? The Malaysian public does not have great confidence that this would be done, and this is why there is the sustained nation-wide call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry rather than an inquest into the causes and circumstances of Teoh’s death.

If the MACC is genuinely committed to wiping out corruption and abuses of power in the allocation of constituency funds, it should investigate all elected representatives including Barisan Nasional and not just target Pakatan Rakyat ones.

In fact, if the MACC investigate all parliamentary and state assembly constituency allocations going back the last five, ten or 20 years, a special court on corruption would have to be set up to deal with the multitude of cases that can be the subjects of prosecution.

DAP will not countenance any abuse or misuse of constituency allocations and the leadership will have to review the whole system. The Pakatan Rakyat leadership will also have to conduct a review of the system to ensure two things: firstly, no abuse or misuse of constituency allocations; and secondly, no room for MACC to misuse its powers as catspaw of Umno/BN to declare war on Pakatan Rakyat.

Providing the macro setting for this high-powered conspiracy to topple the Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government and to break up Pakatan Rakyat, an insidious campaign had been launched to defame and discredit Pakatan Rakyat parties and leaders – such as the lies and falsehoods of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is “a traitor to the Malay race”, that the DAP as “anti-Islam” and that PAS is “subservient to DAP”.

Pakatan Rakyat is facing its worst crisis in 17 months and all Pakatan Rakyat leaders, state and national, must be in crisis mode, as the crisis stemmed from two fronts:

• Firstly, from the high-level Umno/Barisan Nasional conspiracy to topple the Selangor Pakatan Rakyat state government and destroy Pakatan Rakyat at all costs and by whatever illegal and unethical means; and
• Secondly, from the flurry of dissension among Pakatan Rakyat parties in Kedah, Penang and Selangor, causing more and more Malaysians to question whether they had properly and rightly vested their trust and hope in Pakatan Rakyat for change in Malaysia.

Pakatan Rakyat leaders are meeting on Thursday and they must demonstrate that they have not lost sight of the larger vision of building on the momentum of the March 8, 2008 political tsunami to realize political changes in Malaysia by securing increasing support from Malaysians of all races, instead of frightening off support whether Chinese, Malays, Indians, Kadazans or Ibans.

Umno and BN have scented the possibility of “a kill” after the Manek Urai by-election in Kelantan on July 14, 2009 after PAS won it with a reduced majority of 65 votes as compared to the 1,352-vote majority in the March 2008 general election.

Can PAS and Pakatan Rakyat prove that this was only a “false sense” on Umno and BN’s part in the upcoming Permatang Pasir by-election in Penang later this month?

(Speech by DAP Parliamentary Leader and MP for Ipoh Timor Lim Kit Siang at a meeting of DAP Selangor MPs, State Assembly members and local councillors at DAP PJ Utara service centre on Sunday, 9th August 2009 at 4 pm)