Perikatan Nasional (PN) is expecting a low voter turnout among the non-Malay and non-Muslim voters in the Penang general election in August and that is why the PN President, Muhyiddin Yassin, expressed confidence PN can win “nearly 20” state seats to garner a simple majority in the 40-seat Penang state legislative assembly.
That is why he reminded the Gerakan President Dominic Lau at the PN Convention that PN needed only 21 seats to garner a simple majority in Penang, and he asked Gerakan to get one more percent of the votes to win power in Penang State.
Gerakan’s role in the PN is to get that extra one per cent of the votes for PN to form the Penang State Government.
I call on the Penang voters, Malays and non-Malays, Muslims and non-Muslims,. to create history in the state polls in August by voting with higher turnout than the 14th and 15th General Elections to grasp the once-in-a-century opportunity for Malaysia to be world champions again and to be the role model to the world for inter-ethnic, inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-civilisation dialogue, understanding, tolerance and harmony.
Malaysians voters recorded a 82.3 per cent voter turn-out in the 14th general election in 2018, which fell by 8.2 per cent to 74 per cent in the 15th general election in 2022.
Can Penang voters, both Malay and non-Malays, Muslim and non-Muslims, create history by having a voter turnout of more than 82.3%?
PN wants Penang to be like Kelantan, but DAP and the Anwar Unity Government want Kelantan to be like Penang, where the water pipes produce clean water and not teh-tarik water. But to make Kelantan like Penang is not a work of a year or two but a decade or two – but a start has to be made.
We want Malaysia to be world champions again in as many fields of human endeavour as possible, but we do not want to be”world champions” like when Muhyddin Yassin was the Prime Minister from March 2020 to August 2021.
Under Muhyiddin as Prime Minister, we were among the “world champions” and among the top 30 countries with the most number of Covid-19 casualties – in fact, we were ranked No. 20 in the world for Covid-19 deaths at one time.
We were also “world champions” as we were the only country which suspended Parliament and allowed the government to commit gross abuses of power as well as corruption.
But this is not the “world champions” we want Malaysia to be as we should be ashamed to such worldly “feats”.
The 15th national general election gave birth to the Anwar unity government, a tentative effort to reset and return to the original nation-building principles of a plural Malaysia written into the Constitution and the Rukun Negara by the nation’s founding fathers (which included the first three Prime Ministers of Malaysia who were also UMNO Presidents) — constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, rule of law, Islam as the official religion and freedom of religion for all faiths, good governance, public integrity and minimal corruption, meritocracy, respect for human rights, and national unity from our multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural diversity.
Will the tentative efforts of the Anwar Unity Government to reset and return to the original nation-building principles of the plural Malaysia continue and Malaysia become world champions in more and more fields of human endeavour?
Or will Malaysia remain in the trajectory of a divided, failed and rogue state in the coming decades.
This is what the general election in Penang and the other five states in August is all about – whether Malaysia will become a divided, failed and rogue state in the coming decades, especially by Malaysia’s Centennial in 2057.
Or can Malaysia be the role model of the world for inter-ethnic, inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-civilisation dialogue, understanding, tolerance, and harmony?
I believe that Malaysian voters, Malays and non-Malays, Muslims and non-Muslims, want Malaysia to be world champions again and a role model to the world for inter-ethnic, inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-civilisation dialogue, understanding, tolerance and harmony.
We want to have a best political, economic, educational, health and social systems, not a country with most casualties when there is a global pandemic.
We must have a higher voter turnout in the state polls in August than in the 14th and 15th General Elections because we must think of the future of the nation and that of our children and children’s children! We must not allow this once-in-a-century opportunity to be world champions again to be missed.