KUCHING, March 5: DAP’s uncompromising principled stand in governance is the main reason why some political parties would rather not work with them for they know it will always be a hindrance for corrupt practices and cronyism to flourish.
According to Democratic Action Party (DAP) Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen, DAP was the most feared and least welcomed by some political parties because of its principled and “no hanky-panky” stand in governance.
“In the past 20 months of government, we had adhered to the strict principle of clean and good governance.
“This was especially evident in the administration of the Ministry of Finance helmed by Lim Guan Eng who has dutifully acted as the gate-keeper and carefully guarded our rakyat’s money,” he asserted in a statement today.
Upholding this principle, he added, resulted in the cost of many mega projects being slashed from their initial estimated costings to much reduced amounts including the East Coast Rail Line (ECRL), MRT2, LRT3 and Pan Borneo Highway.
“We also saw a 18 per cent reduction of the Plus highway toll rate without any future increment compared to the original Plus toll concession contract which gave the rights to the concessionaire to 5 per cent increment in toll rate every three years.
“There were a few ex-leaders in the PH (Pakatan Harapan) coalition parties who wanted the concession to be transferred to their cronies, but it was strongly opposed by the DAP ministers. Finally, EPF (Employees’ Provident Fund) and Khazanah (Khazanah Nasional Berhad), a wholly state-owned agency, managed to retain the concession,” he added.
However, Chong emphasised that all these came with a cost whereby DAP antogonised many of those with bad intent to abuse their ministerial positions for their personal or cronies’ gains and deterred those with such corrupt intent from being in the government with DAP.
Concering the “backdoor government” saga, he said DAP has emerged as one of the most principled political parties.
“All our 42 MPs stood together defending the fundamental principles of PH to ensure that the government elected by the people in 2018 will continue to work towards fulfilling our PH Manifesto promises until the end of the term.
“We may have lost the government, but we did not lose our integrity and principles. We will continue our political struggle towards a cleaner and better government for Sarawak and Malaysia.
“To our members and supporters, we may be despair at the current situation, but we must not lose hope for a better Sarawak and Malaysia,” he concluded. — DayakDaily
