Lim Kit Siang in Parliament
Question No. 4 during Question Time in Parliament today was the star
attraction of the day as I had asked the Prime Minister to substantiate
his allegation more than a month ago that Bersih 3.0 rally was a coup
attempt by the Opposition to overthrow the government.
MPs from both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat were expecting some
“shocking” revelations to substantiate the very serious allegation by
the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak in Gua Musang on 4th May and
which had the immediate support of three former Inspectors-General of
Police, Tun Hanif Omar, Tan Sri Rahim Noor and Tan Sri Musa Hassan that
the Bersih 3.0 rally was a coup d’etat attempt by Pakatan Rakyat to
overthrow the Najib government on April 28 itself!
The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri
Aziz, who replied on behalf of Najib, was however a total disappointment
as he could not give even an iota of evidence to substantiate Najib’s
allegation and went completely off tangent into a tirade against Bersih
3.0 and Pakatan Rakyat.
Nazri is entitled to his jaundiced views about Bersih 3.0 and Pakatan
Rakyat but they do not constitute evidence that the Bersih 3.0 rally on
April 28 was a coup attempt by Pakatan Rakyat to topple the Barisan
Nasional government by force on April 28.
As I countered Nazri during my supplementary question, is the Najib
government so weak that “salt and water bottles” (which was all that
some of the peaceful Bersih 3.0 protestors were armed that day to defend
themselves against any police tear gas and chemically-laced water
cannons) could even topple it?
Nazri was deadly serious in his reply, saying “Don’t underrate salt
and Water bottles” saying that in Tunisia, the government was toppled
by handphones when it did not have the support of the people.
The secret is now out – the Prime Minister and the three former IGPs
have absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back the wild and reckless
allegation that Bersih 3.0 rally was a coup attempt to topple the
government by force, but the Najib government is mortally afraid of
“salt and water bottles” because they can topple governments which have
lost support of the people.
The challenge to Najib is to find out why despite all the big talk of
transformations in various aspects of national life in the past three
years, he is losing rather than gaining popular support.
As I repeated in Parliament this morning, the government’s misjudgment
and mishandling of Bersih 3.0 and continuing demonization of Bersih 3.0
organisers and Pakatan Rakyat is an even bigger public relations
disaster than the government’s initial misjudgment and mishandling of
Bersih 2.0 rally of July 9, 2011.
For a start, Najib and three former IGPs Hanif, Rahim and Musa should
have the decency to publicly apologise for the baseless allegation
that Bersih 3.0 was a coup attempt by Opposition to topple the
government by force.
Secondly, the government should dissolve the Hanif “independent
advisory panel” inquiring into Bersih 3.0 violence and brutality, unless
the panel’s has a secret agenda and term of reference – to come out
with a finding that Bersih 3.0 rally was a coup attempt by the
Opposition to topple the government by force.
Instead, the government should give full support to the Suhakam
inquiry into Bersih 3.0 to find out what went wrong on April 28 to
result in the violence and brutality which marred a peaceful and
momentous gathering of hundreds of thousands of Malaysians regardless
of race, religion, class, region, age or gender in support of a common
national cause – a clean election!
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