Dr Tan Yee Kew - The Brave One
She understands her priorities and the situation. She made a choice and set the pace for others. She crossed over to PKR with 1.700 others with more to follow. She is The Brave One.
Former MCA Wanita deputy chief and Ministry of International Trade and Industry parliamentary secretary Dr Tan Yee Kew today crossed over with 1,700 others to PKR in Klang - the constituency which she once represented for 13 years.
To rousing applause from a crowd of about 1,500 people who packed the convention hall of the Klang Executive Club, Tan said that despite the reverses suffered by the BN in the recent elections, “they are oblivious of the people’s discontent” and consumed “by power struggles” within component parties.
“The BN just doesn’t get it,” she said. “The March 8 election was a warning to them to act quickly and take steps to tackle issues like rising costs and crime, restoring the judiciary, and bringing equitable development for all,” she added.
“But the BN has not only lost its sense of priorities, it has also lost its direction,” said Tan, holder of a doctorate in development studies from Universiti Malaya and the member of parliament for Klang for three terms from 1995.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
It takes great courage to cross over and moreover she had been an MCA wanita member for over 22 years, ie donkey years in an obsolute party for today\’s standard. Let me repost the following that I received via email and I think it is an excellent piece nonetheless.
While the poor and middle-class are squeezed, an elite group gets breathtakingly rich. We have the distinction of having the worse income disparity in Asean. A re-distribution of wealth is under way from the poor and middle-class to a select group of politically-connected elite.
The end result of this re-distribution will be a small group of super-rich while the majority are pushed into poverty and the middle-class shrinks. This is what happens when the rich gets richer and the poor get poorer.
There is much that is wrong with Malaysia . The responsibility for pulling the country backwards can be laid squarely at the door of the ruling regime. It is BN\’s mis-governance, racial politics and culture of patronage which has seen the country regress economically and
socially.
We seem to be sliding down a slippery slope, further down with each passing year of BN\’s rule. Another five years of BN rule and we\’ll be at Indonesia \’s standard under Suharto. Another 10 years and we\’ll be touching the African standard. What a way to greet 2020.
Is there any hope for Malaysia ?
Faced with the reality that BN will never change, many Malaysians desperate for change turn their lonely eyes to Anwar Ibrahim.
Pakatan Raykat has promised to treat all races fairly, to plug wastage, fight corruption, reform the judiciary and make Malaysia more competitive.
But some have questioned whether we can trust Anwar and his loose coalition of disparate parties..
The question is not whether we can trust Anwar and Pakatan Rakyat but whether we can afford not to.
Can we afford another ten years of BN\’s misrule?