sore losers BN punishing penang!

or rather it should be ‘sore losers umno’ since the gomen (federal) is full of umno people.

no, that ‘punishing penang’ does not come from me but from the penang CM…. though of course i had sort of implied this before in a few of my earlier posts.

well,  malaysiakini had an exclusive interview with penang’s CM, lim guan eng (LGE)  since i’m a true blood proud penangite, i’m only too pleased to make some comments on what he had to say.

one of the interview headline read ‘there had been an attempt to punish penang’. he mentioned that when the malaysiakini’s interviewer asked him about penang’s plan for all state exco to declare their assets.

Talking about transparency, what about the asset declaration among the state excos?

We intend to do so but I think there are some legal complications because the federal government has written to us, asking us to have an uniformed practice (with the federal government). We are still looking and awaiting for their communication.

The thing is we don’t want to take any action which appears that we are trying to do a fast one on the federal government because there has been an attempt to punish Penang and certain states, because we are trying to do things in public interest but not in the Barisan Nasional’s interest. That’s unfortunate. We want to protect the interest of the people as long as we achieve our ends even although it may be a bit later, I think we are willing to work it out.

oh gee, does this means that the PR government need to tread carefully so as to do things in BN’s interest??  if no, then they will suffer the implications of being punished by BN? wow! the BN federal government is the big boss eh!

methink LGE  is in a difficult position. on one hand, there’s so much he wanted to do but on the other hand, he is scared what he do might cause the sore losers BN… er… the BN federal government to go berserk… accusing him of this and that or of course wanting to punish the state. well it already had been happening… we saw that, right. e.g. when the new tourism minister, the tomboy, cancel to MOU of all the 5 PR led states. then we have the federal government mulling the possibility of scrapping penang’s mega project. for this, LGE, and i’m sure all the PR penang ministers consider it as punishment but to many of us rakyat, we don’t mind the mega projects being scrapped!!

LGE also mentioned that the federal government "adopted a vindictive approach, wreak vengeance on the voters for daring to throw them out"

when asked about the freedom of information bill, LGE had this to say:

This government wants to be transparent. One of the first step we do is for all government halls and balai rakyat (community halls) to be open for rental to the public, even for political parties which are not aligned to the government like Umno, MCA and Gerakan, they can use the hall provided they get the police permit, in the past they are not allowed (to do so).

really? this is good news to me then. being involved in a few organisations in church and a few NGOs, sometimes we need a place to hold a function and we were at wits end searching for one… esp. one that is cheap. uh oh but what if the halls are federal-government owned?? we might not be able to get to rent it or they will impose strict or silly conditions for renting!

i remember sometime ago, suaram penang wanted to organise an event at the kompleks penyayang (caring society comples), and had already paid for it and publicity all gone out but just 3 days before the event, they were told that they could not hold their event there as it looked ‘political’ in nature!! ha! indeed. the speakers were all from NOGs, nothing political about them. i heard all the while gerakan had events there…. wasn’t that worst, as gerakan is a political party – yet they were allowed to use the kompleks penyayang. double standard from whoever in charge of the kompleks! though it was after 8 march, it seemed the kompleks is still ‘federal owned’?

LGE also mentioned about penang’s government finance… being ‘uncertain’ now. thus, he said they have to go on a cost cutting exercise. good. already we did see LGE himself doing that like he flies economy class, he did not stay at the CM house because huge repairs is needed, he had cut down the orders of luxurious cars for the ministers. oh i think (i saw once) he does not have police outriders when he’s traveling in his car.

there are lots of other interesting things LGE said in the malaysiakini’s interview, so hop over there to read ok (links below). if you are not a subsriber of malaysiakini, you should subsribe!! it’s not expensive and you get lots of interesting, exciting, exclusive, never read in MSM news!! anyway since i’m in a good mood, if you can’t access malaysiakini, you can go to beritamalaysia to read some of the news from malaysiakini.

hmm… i wonder from all that he had said in the interview, will one of those in BN came out to accuse him this and that!!

(photo taken from malaysiakini)

CM: penang’s state finance ‘uncertain’
Q&A: " there’s been an attempt to punish penang"
standing up to the ‘bully boys in  umno’