There are ways for competition to be beneficial. If the US and China responsibly compete to provide public goods needed by the world, there will be benefits all round.
Dr Adham Baba, the new health minister, made a disastrous first television appearance on March 19 in which he told the public to drink warm water to “flush” the virus down to the stomach. The doctor, who used to run several small-town private clinics, was roundly panned on social media and instructed by Muhyiddin’s media operatives to disappear from public view.
DAP Johor urges the Johor State Government and Menteri Besar Datuk Hasni Mohammad to emulate the Selangor and Penang Governments in announcing a significant sum of financial aid package for the people of Johor, particularly small businesses.
Under a state of emergency, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and his cabinet now have powers to make laws without parliamentary approval. This essentially means Malaysia’s rendezvous with democracy – which only began with the May 2018 election that brought down the only ruling coalition the country had known since its independence in 1957 – is now fully frozen. So what’s next?
Insanity is doing more of the same yet expecting a different result. As far as Covid-19 is concerned, Malaysia needs to do things differently, urgently!
Unfortunately, eleven months after the first lockdown on 18 March 2020, lockdown should now be the last resort, no longer the first response. The nation must be mentally prepared to live with Covid-19 for at least another nine months until vaccination reaches a huge number of our population.
An election will come, sooner or later. We need to prepare for it. To understand the current political chaos, we have to appreciate a three-kingdom situation, whether in terms of political coalitions or voting blocs.
Understanding DAP is not just important to DAP members or its allies. DAP’s significant influence and the size of its parliamentary presence today means that the media and the public needs to get it right to avoid misjudgment.