The Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhtyddin Yassin’s two recent initiatives have proved to be major flops.
On the eve of the Conference of Rulers special meeting on June 16, he announced the National Recovery Plan for the Covid-19 pandemic but it proved to be a big failure.
On June 15, there were 5,419 new Covid-19 cases and 101 new Covid-19 deaths. Yesterday, there were 9,180 new Covid-19 cases and 77 new Covid-19 deaths.
In the seven days ending on June 15, there were 533 Covid-19 deaths. In the seven days ending yesterday, there had been a 22% increase of fatalities to 649 new Covid-19 deaths.
This shows the enormity of the failure of the National Recovery Plan and why the NRP could not transition from Phase One to Phase Two on June 28 based on achieving the threshold of less than 4,000 cases.
Secondly, on Wednesday on 7th July 2021, Muhyiddin took pre-emptive action and appointed Ismail Sabri as Deputy Prime Minister and Hishamuddin Hussein as Senior Minister but this did not prevent the UMNO Supreme Council meeting the same night from immediately withdrawing support for Muhyiddin’s Perikatan Nasional (PN) government over its failure in the war against the Covid-19 pandemic.
With UMNO withdrawing support for Mjuhydiddin’s PN government, he should honourably resign as Prime Minister, but he is hoping on getting enough support from recalcitrant UMNO MPs to remain as Prime Minister.
Will Muhyiddin be prepared to put his majority support in Parliament to the test and make it as the first item of parliamentary business when Parliament is reconvened, as Tun Hussein Onn did on January 27, 1976 when Tun Razak died in London and he took over as the third Prime Minister of Malaysia?
Nobody believes that Muhyiddin would dare to do so and everybody expect him to do his utmost to avoid a confidence test in Parliament when it is reconvened.
Yesterday, there was an article in the international media entitled “Malaysia is staggering down the road to failed statehood”.
Malaysia is not yet a failed state but it is on the trajectory to a failed state – and Muhyiddin’s avoidance of a confidence test when Parliament is reconvened is one hallmark that Malaysia is on the trajectory to a failed state.
Malaysia has become one of the world’s worst performing nations in the 18-month long Covid-19 pandemic, a “White Flag” country with its citizens in despair and hopelessness at the “fifth wave” devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a Prime Minster clinging on the power despite losing majority support of Members of Parliament.
Honour dictates no other course and Muhyiddin should honourably resign as Prime Minister of Malaysia.
(Media Statement (2) by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, 10th July 2021)