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PETALING JAYA: DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang has called for a national consensus to elevate the nation to a respectable global position in terms of the economy and perception of corruption, which have lagged behind in several Asian countries for the past 25 years .
He said that as the nation enters the final days of the year, there is much evidence that it has failed in its 2020 Vision to make Malaysia a great world-class nation that is united, harmonious and democratic, with minimized corruption.
“We hoped that this vision would make Malaysia able to harness its unique position as a confluence of four great civilizations to be a beacon of light in a difficult and distracted world.
“Obviously, we have failed in this vision. Urgent action is therefore needed to infuse Malaysians with a new national consensus and pick up our boots if we do not want to spiral downward into a failed state in 2040, ”he said in a statement today.
Referring to the “great” opportunities Malaysia had missed to fight corruption in the past 25 years, Lim said that numerous anti-corruption campaigns, major anti-corruption laws and the elevation of the former Anti-Corruption Agency to Malaysia Anti-Commission had been carried out. of Corruption (MACC), among others.
Despite all this, he regretted that Malaysia has fallen to its lowest ranking in Transparency International’s (TI) annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI).
“In 2019, Malaysia ranked 51st with a score of 53. This was the best performance in the last quarter century, with an improvement of 10 places in a single year.
“Now, with a string of corruption cases involving top politicians being removed, I fear TI’s ranking for 2020, which will be released next month. China, Thailand, India and Indonesia are examples of Asian countries greatly improved on the index, ”he said.
On the economic front, Lim said that Japan’s Center for Economic Research had predicted that Vietnam will become an upper-middle-income country in 2023 and that its gross domestic product (GDP) will surpass that of Taiwan in 2035.
He said that when Malaysia embarked on the New Economic Policy in 1970, Vietnam had a GDP of RM11.2 billion, behind Malaysia’s GDP of RM15.1 billion.
“The time to act on the basis of a new national consensus is now if we are to spare Malaysia the fate and ignominy of kleptocracy, kakistocracy and a failed state in 20 years.”
