Prime Minister should explain how the Perikatan Nasional government is to be trusted when the police cannot take action against a Minister for violating the Covid 19 quarantine SOP?
The Director-General of Health, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah has advised Malaysians to lodge report against people violating the Covid 19 quarantine SOP.
Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin should explain how the Perikatan Nasional government is to be trusted when the police cannot take action against a Minister for violating the Covid 19 quarantine SOP?
Muhyiddin is of claiming that his administration passed its greatest test in the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said the crisis is unprecedented in Malaysia and across the world, but with the tenacity of the government, the support of frontliners, civil servants and volunteers, and the people’s discipline, the nation was up to the challenge.
I do not agree. The Covid-19 pandemic presented the Muhyiddin government an opportunity to hide its weaknesses and internal contradictions, for Malaysians rallied behind the government in the face of the global disaster. But the chickens are coming home to roost.
The Muhyiddin government had at first mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic, causing a second wave of Covid outbreak in March, which reached its peak on April 3.
If not for the Sheraton Move, there would not be a second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak and lockdown of the country.
It is fortunate that Malaysia had contained the second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak, although like the rest of the world, we must be prepared for any resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak – a second wave for most of the countries of the world but a third wave for Malaysia!
Thailand, the first country outside China to report Covid-19 cases in January this year, has reported 3,497 cumulative cases and 58 fatalities as compared with a cumulative total of 10,147 cases and 129 fatalities in Malaysia.
Malaysia passed the 10,000 mark in the cumulative total of Covid 19 cases on Malaysia Day on Sept., 16 – a record which Malaysians are not proud of.
With a smaller population, Malaysia should have a better record on the Covid-19 epidemic than Thailand.
This is despite the fact that internationally, Malaysia has been one of the success stories in the Covid 19 epidemic, when compared to over 30 million cumulative total of Covid 19 cases and close to a million deaths worldwide today.
When the World Health Organisation declared Covid 19 as a pandemic on March 11, there were more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives.
Now, more than six months later, the daily increase of Covid-19 cases is more than twice the total global cumulative figure on March 11, which now stands at over 30,682,305 cases and 955,655 deaths – some 260 times in cumulative total of cases and 230 times in fatalities as compared to March 11.
The top five countries with Covid-19 cases today are now completely different from the top five countries on March 11, as today’s top five countries are:
- United States – 6,921,034 cases – 203,106 deaths
- India - 5,305,475 cases - 85,625 deaths
- Brazil - 4,497,434 cases - 135,857 deaths
- Russia - 1,091,186 cases - 19,195 deaths
- Colombia - 750,471 cases - 23,850 deaths
China has dropped from the top country in the world in Covid 19 epidemic to No. 41 in the list of nations with the most cumulative total of Covid 19 cases.
Malaysia must not over-react but must exercise eternal vigilance on the Covid-19 epidemic.
But the government must cease its double standards on the application of Covid-19 SOP as we cannot have one law for Ministers and another law for ordinary citizens.