by Susan Loone
Malaysiakini
Aug 21, 2011
MCA has been accused of conspiring with Umno-owned Malay language daily, Utusan Malaysia, to insinuate that Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng wants to be prime minister.
Lim told the party’s president Dr Chua Soi Lek to refrain from ‘lying’ as he had neither the ambition nor the qualifications to be PM.
He asked Chua to stop following in the footsteps of Utusan Malaysia by inciting racial sentiments to attack him, the DAP or Pakatan Rakyat.
“Chua is unethical, immoral, and irresponsible for referring to a Facebook page ‘1M Malaysians Support Lim Guan Eng To Be Prime Minister Of Malaysia’ when making his remarks,” Lim told the media in Butterworth today.
“It seems that the MCA is now working with Utusan Malaysia to attack us, they are in the same boat, playing the same dirty tactics,” he added.
Lim, who is DAP national secretary general, denied that his party or Pakatan was responsible for the page, which currently has 44,000 likes.
He called on the relevant authorities to take the necessary action against the page, which does not indicate its initiator.
Lim was referring to Chua’s statement in Kelantan yesterday when asked about a blog said to be promoting him as prime minister.
Chua had said that initially, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had crowed that he would lead Pakatan as the PM.
However, that never materialised and now, they want Lim to be the one, said the former health minister.
He also pointed out that Pakatan may face an internal power struggle to decide the candidate for prime minister should it wrest power from the BN in the coming polls.
He added that in BN, the coalition was committed that Najib Abdul Razak will continue to be prime minister if it wins in the next election.
Lim, who is the Bagan MP, said he was not interested in the post as he was not qualified to be the country’s seventh prime minister.
“I have already mentioned that there is someone more qualified than me to be PM and that man is Anwar,” he said.
“It would not be a problem if I had wanted to be one (PM) but I do not…I am happy as the chief minister of Penang,” he added.