Pakatan Harapan has sent the brightest of the new generation of Malaysians in the 14th General Election to Johore to transform the state into a frontier for political change in Malaysia.
In the 13th General Election, DAP sent party strategist Liew Chin Tong from Bukit Bendera in Penang to Kluang and DAP woman leader Teo Nie Ching from Serdang in Selangor to Kulai.
For the 14th General Election, Yeo Bee Yin, who won the Selangor State Assembly seat of Damansara with a majority of over 30,000 votes in 2013, have left a very safe seat to contest in a risky Bakri parliamentary seat in Johore.
Pakatan Harapan has sent a Malay intellectual, Dr. Maszlee Malik from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) to contest for the parliamentary seat of Simpang Renggam and three-time winner of Asia’s Best Speaker Award, Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, 25, to contest in the parliamentary seat of Muar.
PKR has sent its youth leader, Akmal Nasir, INVOKE Chief Resource Office and Executive Director of National Oversight and Whistleblowers (NOW) to contest the Johor Bahru parliamentary seat while Amanah has sent its national organizing secretary and long-time champion of the rights of Felda settlers, Suhaizan Kaiat to contest the Kukup state assembly seat.
For the first time in the nation’s 61-year history, the best of all Malaysian generations from all races and religions are coming together to bring about political change in Malaysia in the 14th General Elections on May 9, 2018.
I confess that I had to ask Bee Yin just now for the full name of the MP for Simpang Renggam. Although Liang Teck Meng had been a Member of Parliament for Simpang Renggam, he has failed to make any impression in Parliament in the past 10 years.
However, I must congratulate Teck Meng for creating world history – for as Chairman of the National Water Services Commission (SPAN), he must be the only Chairman of a water commission whose parliamentary constituency suffers from repeated rupture of water supplies, or polluted pipe-water supplies, whenever it rains – a problem which has afflicted Simpang Renggam for years with no solution in sight.
For his failure to resolve this most basic infrastructure problem, Liang should have resigned either as MP for Simpang Rengam or Chairman of SPAN or even both, but Liang had instead clung to both positions.
Can Liang give satisfactory explanation?
If Pakatan Harapan wins the 14GE and forms the Malaysian Government in Putrajaya, the piped water supply problem will be the top priority of the new government.
(Speech in Simpang Rengam n/v on Sunday, 29th April 2018 at 11 am)