Najib: Selangor’s success by BN, not Pakatan
UPDATED @ 06:43:54 PM 10-05-2012
SHAH ALAM, May 10 — Datuk Seri Najib Razak moved today to attribute Selangor's economic success to Barisan Nasional (BN), insisting to voters here ahead of a general election expected soon that the country's richest state could not have achieved so much in "only four years".
The prime minister accused "certain parties" of attempting to take credit for BN's efforts to develop Selangor, which he said had turned the state into a strategic development centre.
"The BN government developed Selangor very well. The reality is that all the facilities that we enjoy today could not have been developed in just one term.
"So even though it has only been less than a term, just four years (under Pakatan Rakyat's rule), but already there are certain parties who want to claim credit... supposedly, this is their achievement," he told a crowd of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs at the 'Jom Niaga' Selangor chapter launch this afternoon.
BN lost the country’s wealthiest and most industrialised state and three others - Perak, Kedah and Penang - in a historic upset in Election 2008, where the federal opposition also captured 82 federal seats to deny the ruling coalition its customary two-third parliamentary majority.
BN later took back Perak in an electoral putsch in February 2009 and has been working hard to unseat PR in Selangor.
Najib cited Shah Alam as an example of BN's efforts, saying that the ruling coalition had worked hard from the 1970s turn the bustling township into a city.
He said it takes more than one decade or at least two or three generations to achieve what Shah Alam is today.
"That is why we have to view what exists today in the true perspective," he said.
Najib pointed out that Selangor alone had contributed a significant RM130 billion or 22.1 per cent to the country's total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2011.
"This was significant because we (BN) successfully developed Selangor and the Klang Valley as a strategic development centre," he said.
Najib added that foreign investors would not park their businesses here if they did not regard Malaysia as a country with a federal government that offer's "investor-friendly" policies.
He fingered the PKR-led state government for purportedly doubling the rental rates of the Selangor Development Corporation (PKNS) complex business premises to its occupants beginning January this year.
The traders, said Najib, had been so badly affected by the hiked rentals that they had even asked if the federal government could take over PKNS.
"My answer? If we were to take over PKNS, it would be difficult because it is state-owned. It’s easier to take over the government instead," he said.
"The reality here is that there are parties that place politics above the community's prosperity."
The first-term prime minister is said likely to call for elections soon and his administration has been eyeing Selangor, the prized jewel it is determined to have back in its grasp.
Najib is seen to be in his best election footing as yet, riding on the feel-good factor arising from his administration's recent slew of reforms to controversial preventive laws and cash handouts to voters.
The Pekan MP has been labelled by some as the "father of transformation" and painted a reformist for his efforts, which, among others, even saw the highly-criticised Internal Security Act (ISA) repealed, a new law allowing public gatherings enacted and the ban on students in politics lifted.
BN sources also believe that last month's rally for free and fair elections by election watchdog Bersih, had not affected Najib's support despite negative reports in the foreign media and as such, an election could be called as soon as July.
Bersih's first rally in 2007 had been largely credited for the staggering losses that BN had suffered in the tsunami of Election 2008, said to be the ruling pact's worst showing to date.