The six State General Elections will be a crucial test whether the Anwar unity government will have political stability to last for five years to give Malaysia a chance to change course to again become a first-rate world-class plural nation

Firstly, I must congratulate V. Ganabatirau for his 91,801 vote-majority win in the Klang Parliamentary constituency in the 15th General Election, the third parliamentary constituency with the largest majority.

His 115,539-vote win in the Klang Parliamentary Constituency has proved that Klang is one of the strongest bases of the DAP’s Malaysian Dream for a united, just, democratic, and prosperous plural nation which is of first-rate world-class standards.

Klang was one of the first places I used to campaign when the DAP was formed in early 1966 to ensure that Malaysia become a world-class plural nation which practises constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, the rule of law, respect for human rights, an end to injustices and inequalities in the country, and a “beacon of light to a difficult and distracted world” because we could leverage on the values and virtues of the four great civilisations which meet in confluence in Malaysia.

Selangor, together with Penang, Negeri Sembilan, Kedah, Kelantan, and Terengganu will be having their state general elections in the next few months.

The six State General Elections will a crucial test whether the Anwar unity government will have the political stability to last for five years to give Malaysia a chance to change course to again become a first-rate world-class plural nation.

DAP must ensure that the general elections in Selangor, Penang, Negeri Sembilan, Kedah, Kelantan, and Terengganu is a solid vote for five years of the Anwar unity government, for the country has an arduous journey in the last third of Malaysia’s first Centennial to stop the national decline from first-rate world-class nation to a second-rate mediocre country, and Malaysians do not want the country to decline further to end up as a divided, failed and kleptocratic state on Malaysia’s Centennial in 2057.

We have not only lost out in economic growth to once war-ravaged counties like Vietnam and Cambodia, we have deviated from the original nation-building principles written into the Malaysian Constitution and Rukun Negara by the nation’s founding fathers — including the first four UMNO Presidents, Onn Jaafar, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Razak Hussein, and Hussein Onn.

The nation’s founding fathers will turn in their graves if they know that the nation they had founded as a just, free, democratic and prosperous nation with a clean and honest government has fallen so far as to be regarded as a kleptocracy by the world.

The nation’s decline and deviation from the original nation-building principles had become so serious and blatant that people who do not accept the original nation-building principles in the Constitution and the Rukun Negara could become Ministers in the country, and even become the Prime Minister, even though through the ‘backdoor’.

Muhyiddin approached me in 2016, after he was sacked from UMNO and before Bersatu was formed, for DAP backing for him to become the Prime Minister.

I declined, as the DAP was committed to naming Anwar Ibrahim as the Prime Minister-designate of Pakatan Rakyat, but the thought of the terrible idea of a “Malay first” becoming Prime Minister of plural Malaysia entered my mind.

Muhyddin’s failure to bring the Covid-19 Pandemic under control was his great failure as the first “backdoor” Prime Minister of Malaysia, but it is his 2010 statement as Deputy Prime Minister that he was “Malay first” and “Malaysian second” that was his worst statement in his political life.

When Muhyiddin suspended Parliament and declared emergency on January 11, 2021 to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, there were cumulative totals of 138,224 Covid-19 cases and 555 Covid-19 deaths.

Six months later, when Muhyiddin resigned and Emergency ended, the cumulative totals increased over 10 times in Covid-19 cases and 24 times in Covid-19 deaths to reach nearly 1.5 million Covid-19 cases and over 13,000 Covid-19 deaths.

Yet Muhyiddin had the cheek to claim during the 15th General Election campaign that “only a few Malaysians died” in the Covid-19 pandemic.

But can Muhyiddin explain why he violated the Constitution and the Rukun Negara declaring that he was “Malay first”, and bringing into the Cabinet Ministers who do not accept the Constitution and Rukun Negara which clearly declared that Malaysia is a plural society and stressed the paramount importance of unity in diversity?

The Anwar unity government must honour the human rights of Malaysians to freedom of expression, to criticise the government based on facts and figures, but it must be firm against the extreme, divisive and toxic politics of lies, fear, hate, race and religion because they could destroy plural Malaysia and tear up the Constitution and the Rukun Negara.