(Bukit Mertajam, Sunday): The cases of DAP Deputy Secretary-General and MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Guan Eng, the former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, and the recent nation-wide furore over highway tolls are three examples why there is an urgent and imperative need for the DAP’s nation-wide’s "Justice For All" campaign to ensure that there is justice, freedom, democracy and good governance in the country.
If an elected Member of Parliament could be jailed, not because of any crime of arson, armed robbery, rape, murder or criminal breach of trust but for defending the dignity of an underaged 15-year-old girl, a victim of statutory rape, there can be no justice in Malaysia.
If a person who was until recently the Deputy Prime Minister, the second highest post in the government of the land, could be assaulted while under police custody until he still spotted a black eye ten days later, the system of governance in Malaysia is sorely lacking in justice to the extent that no Malaysian can feel safe and secure under the Malaysian sun?
The current nation-wide furore over the Cabinet’s decision to approve unfair toll rate increases for the North-South Expressway as well as three other expressways, and to allow unfair new tolls to be introduced in several new highways, is another manifestation of injustice in the Malaysian system of governance.
In many cases, this is a double injustice - an injustice to motorists
who have to pay exorbitant tolls and an injustice to all who do not use
the expressways because they have to pay taxes so that the government can
compensate the highway concessionaires for not imposing the full quantum
of toll rate increases due to them under the highway contracts.
The denial of the Barisan Nasional’s parliamentary two-third
majority in the next general election is therefore the important first
step to establish justice, freedom, democracy and good
governance in Malaysia, and I call on all justice-loving Malaysians to
make this their common objective.
(23/1/99)