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Selangor crisis shows BN is only option: Najib

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia has no alternative to the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition as the rival Pakatan Rakyat (PR) alliance has yet to get its act together despite being formed nearly seven years ago, Prime Minister Najib Razak said yesterday.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak says Pakatan Rakyat’s populist policies cannot work in the long run. PHOTO: REUTERS

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak says Pakatan Rakyat’s populist policies cannot work in the long run. PHOTO: REUTERS

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KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia has no alternative to the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition as the rival Pakatan Rakyat (PR) alliance has yet to get its act together despite being formed nearly seven years ago, Prime Minister Najib Razak said yesterday.

Mr Najib cited the ongoing leadership crisis in PR-ruled Selangor to support his argument, saying that PR component parties had tried to mimic the BN coalition, but failed to even reach an understanding on who should be the next Chief Minister of the state.

“They use the social media and political ceramahs (rallies) to slander Barisan, in trying to show that they are a better alternative, but they failed. They tried to copy BN in forming a pact with three parties but look at Selangor ... their understanding is beginning to fall apart,” he said in opening the sixth annual general assembly of the Malaysian Makkal Sakti Party in Kuala Lumpur. The party is aligned with BN, but is not a part of it.

PR, which comprises the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) and Democratic Action Party (DAP), was formed in the wake of the March 2008 general election, but has been dogged by divisions.

These differences burst into the open over their joint leadership of Selangor, Malaysia’s wealthiest state and an industrial hub neighbouring Kuala Lumpur, which the opposition won control of in 2008 in a huge setback for the BN government and retained last year.

PKR and DAP are currently at loggerheads with PAS over their single nomination of PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail for the Chief Minister post. PAS had broken the pact’s initial agreement to name only Dr Wan Azizah and instead proposed three undisclosed names, which PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang personally submitted to the Selangor Sultan.

Thirty Selangor assemblymen — all 28 from PKR and the DAP, as well as two from PAS — have signed statutory declarations in support of Dr Wan Azizah, comprising the majority of the 56-seat state legislative assembly.

Mr Najib, who is also BN chairman, took another swipe at the federal opposition bloc yesterday, saying PR was mistaken in believing that it could win public support by subscribing to “populist policies”, adding that, “it cannot work in the long run”.

BN’s success, Mr Najib said, was rooted in the willingness of each of the 13 component parties in the Malaysian governing coalition to cooperate with each other towards a common goal.

He added that BN’s openness to other political parties, which are not part of the coalition but share the same aim, helped to strengthen the ruling bloc. “We don’t have to be jealous of each other ... it is not a zero-sum game,” Mr Najib said. He assured the 1,000-odd Malaysian Makkal Sakti Party delegates that even if they were not formally a part of BN, he would try to fulfil their requests.

In what was seen as a victory for the opposition, Selangor achieved a gross domestic product of about US$55 billion (S$69 billion) in 2012, which amounts to 23 per cent of Malaysia’s economy.

The state is also a hub for multinationals and has been seen as a testing ground for the opposition to prove its competence to take over power at the national level. AGENCIES

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