Samy out of touch with the community

The Indian voters, who for long have been loyal to the Barisan Nasional, will shift away from voting for the ruling coalition in the next general election, predicted Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang.

He also said that the elections will be held in March next year. Constitutionally the prime minister need not call for a national poll until April 2009. Speaking at a forum held in Ipoh yesterday, Lim said that the next general election will be different due to the “awakening of political consciousness among the Malaysian Indians”.“They are an important factor in determining the electoral outcome,” he said.

He added that although there were no single parliamentary or state assembly constituencies where the Indian voters constitute the majority of the electorate and could singly decide on the outcome, Indian voters nevertheless represented over 10 percent of the electorate in 62 parliamentary constituencies and 138 state assembly constituencies.“

In 28 parliamentary and 78 state assembly constituencies in Peninsular Malaysia, the Indian voters are the ‘kingmakers’ as they constitute more than 15 percent of the electorate and exercise as decisive influence as to who wins or loses in the constituency,” he added.Lim also trained his attacks on MIC president S Samy Vellu, whom he said had confirmed that the government had dismissed the community’s legitimate grievances in an RTM interview on Wednesday night.

On the show, he talked about the development and success of the Indian community. Serious denial syndromeSamy’s responses in the interview, Lim charged, showed that the minister had lost touch with the Indian community. Lim further claimed that Samy has a "serious denial syndrome" when he claimed that the government has never neglected the Indians.

According to him, Samy blamed "ineffective delivery system" in dismissing legitimate grievances of the Indians over political, economic, educational, social, cultural and religious marginalisation. Saying that it was a very poor excuse, Lim told that "Samy Vellu cannot run away from the fact that he had been the MIC president and sole Indian cabinet minister for over 28 years”.

In the interview Samy, who is also the works minister, was quoted as saying that he had asked Abdullah to "give a bit more to the Indians".On this issue, Lim asked: "Why is he asking ... as if (he) must beg on behalf of the Indians, when (they) are entitled to ask what should be rightfully theirs?"Samy’s constituency Sungai Siput is one area where the Indian voters make about 22.45 percent.