I have the honour to announce that the DAP and Pakatan Harapan candidate for the Rasah parliamentary seat in the 14th General Election will be the DAP Negri Sembilan State Secretary Cha Kee Chin and the candidate for the Negri Sembilan State Assembly seat for Seremban Jaya (formerly Senawang) will the incumbent State Assemblyman P. Gunasekaran.
The 14th General Election is a matter of days away, and everybody is expecting Parliament to be dissolved next week, either before or after the last parliamentary sitting on Thursday on April 5.
I fully endorse the announcement by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, whom the Pakatan Harapan has designated as the eighth Prime Minister of Malaysia, that two of the earliest decisions of the new Pakatan Harapan Malaysian Government after winning the 14th General Election and forming the new Malaysian Government with Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad as Prime Minister and Datuk Seri Dr. Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as Deputy Prime Minister will be making the Election Commission a truly independent body and repealing the Anti-Fake News law even if it is passed in Parliament next week.
The Constituency Redelineation Report of the Election Commission, which came into effect in less than 24 hours after it was bulldozed through Parliament on Wednesday (when I became a parliamentary “ghost” after being suspended for six months from Parliament for asking from where the Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia, had the powers to embargo the Election Commission Report for public discussion and feedback after the Report was tabled in Parliament the previous week).
It was a monstrous work of constituency gerrymandering, going against the two fundamental principles of the Malaysian Constitution providing for an independent and non-partisan Election Commission and ensuring free and fair elections, which will give Malaysia a new international epithet apart from being a global kleptocracy – a democracy which has become a rogue state!
I said in Parliament that I was ashamed to be a MP in the 13th Parliament as it had done absolutely nothing to clear or cleanse Malaysia of the 3Is – infamy, ignominy and iniquity – as a global kleptocracy. Now the 13th Parliament as added an additional international epithet for Malaysia in adopting one of the worst constituency gerrymandering reports which makes a total mockery of the cardinal democratic principle of “one man, one vote, one value”.
The whole purpose of the Election Commission’s Report for the worst constituency gerrymandering is to help the UMNO/BN coalition to “steal” and “win” another ten parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia.
However, if there is a swing of 15% of the Malay voters and 5% of the non-Malay voters from UMNO/BN to Pakatan Harapan in the 14GE as compared to 13GE, then all the worst gerrymandering by the Election Commission will be nullified and Pakatan Harapan will be able to win more than a simple majority of the total parliamentary seats to comfortably enter Putrajaya to form the new Malaysian Federal Government.
Another disgraceful and monstrous legislation mentioned by Anwar is the Anti-Fake News Bill before Parliament – which is condemned not only by local journalists but also the international media, with the Washington Post dismissing it as nothing but an excuse for censorship.
As former Minister Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz has said, Najib has become the modern-day “Emperor with New Clothes” who does not know that he is completely naked and who does not seem realise that in the age of information when information travels at the speed of light, it is impossible to censor and ban information and news reports about the 1MDB scandal happening all over the world.
Only a change of government in the 14th General Election can end Malaysia’s long night of international shame as a global kleptocracy and a rogue democracy.
Whether Malaysia can be saved from the double ignominy, infamy and iniquity as a global kleptocracy and a democracy gone rogue will be decided by the Malaysian voters in the 14th General Election!
(Speech at the DAP 14th General Election Preparations Dinner in Senawang on Saturday, March 31, 2018 at 8.30 pm)