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PETALING JAYA: Opposition parties criticized Putrajaya’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic tonight, in their respective New Year’s message, highlighting how it has led to the number of cases exceeding that of China.
To date, Malaysia has reported 113,010 cases, while China has confirmed 87,052 cases.
Pejuang founder Dr. Mahathir Mohamad said that the political pressure facing the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government prevented them from concentrating on fighting the spread of the disease.
“If the government only looked to the east one more time, we might know how China had managed to contain the spread of infections,” the former prime minister wrote.
Mahathir added that the ruling coalition is only focused on staying in power.
He went on to ask Malaysians to make graft rejection their resolution for 2021, saying it would save the nation, especially once the Covid-19 vaccine is available.
Meanwhile, Lim Guan Eng said the government’s mishandling of the pandemic led to Malaysia becoming the second highest Asean nation in terms of Covid-19 infections, after Indonesia.
The DAP secretary general said this was cause for concern, as the country’s health facilities may not be able to cope with the growing number of cases.
Worse, Lim said, the PN government refused to shell out 2.1 billion ringgit for advance purchases of Covid-19 vaccines, which, he added, led to the delay in receiving the vaccines.
“Such a stingy and stingy refusal to make the sum available is a bigger and more incompetent mistake than Fitch’s recent downgrade of Malaysia’s sovereign credit rating by Fitch,” he added.
Lim also drew attention to the government’s inability to address political instability, saying it led to a health, economic and educational crisis, as well as a “crisis of confidence.”
“Even Vietnam has now overtaken Malaysia economically with higher GDP for the first time.”
