Press Statement by Jeffrey Chew in Georgetown on Sunday, 1^st November 2009:

Gerakan has no future if its young leaders pick up the bad habits of its senior leaders by ignoring truth, continue to treat lies as facts

Gerakan has no future if its young leaders pick up the bad habits of its senior leaders by ignoring truth, continue to treat lies as facts and fail to protect its dignity. After Gerakan Penang Chairman Teng Hock Nan had broken off relations with Penang UMNO last year for shredding Gerakan President Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon's picture, Koh had agreed to work again with Penang UMNO recently even though no apology was given. Even Teng Hock Nan is no different when he could not back up his claims that Penang Chief Minister wasted public funds spending RM 50,000 a month in maintaining PG1, when he should be changing new cars. Teng has still not shown proof that RM 600,000 yearly was spent on maintaining the Chief Minister's official car PG1, which is nearly 15 times the current value of PG1.

Gerakan Economy Bureau head Wan Sun Keong has committed the same mistakes of his senior leaders by mindlessly attacking Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng with lies that Lim turned down a RM30bil foreign investment because he “could not commit 1,000 engineers” in the state. This is untrue. Lim had stated 1,000 electrical and electronic (E&E) engineers, NOT 1,000 engineers. In fact he had said before that Penang lost USD 3 billion investment because he could not guarantee 1,000 electrical and electronic engineers. Even Tenaga Nasional faces a shortage of electrical engineers and the E&E are in great demand by the E&E industry, especially multi-national companies in Penang. That is why Lim had urged the Federal government to invest in educational facilities in Penang to train more E&E engineers.

It is untrue to say that Lim had turned the USD 3 billion investment because Lim had never turned down any quality investment by multi-national companies. Instead Lim had worked hard to make Penang an attractive investment location of choice by focusing on developing physical and human infrastructure as well as running a clean government based on CAT - competency, accountability and transparency. These efforts have paid off with Penang garnering a record-breaking RM 10.2 billion investments in 2008. Both Transparency International and the 2008 Auditor-General Report commended Penang's CAT governance for successfully fighting corruption and waste, the first time TI has praised any government in Malaysia. These praises has value in monetary savings of of nearly RM 36 million in operating expenses for 2008 and an increase in the assets of Penang of 21.1 % to 1.025 billion, the first time RM 1 billion mark has been broken.

Instead of taking time to make baseless allegations against Lim, Gerakan leaders should be demanding that BN either sack UMNO MPs for humiliating Koh Tsu Koon or else protect its dignity by withdrawing from BN.

* Jeffrey Chew, Special Investment Officer to Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng