Trust in Khalid Ibrahim, says Anwar Ibrahim

May 30, 2010

www.themalaysianinsider.com

Anwar: Trust in Khalid Ibrahim

By Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani (in Kota Bharu)

Trust this clean and sincere Menteri Besar, says Anwar

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today urged PKR members to have patience and confidence in Selangor  Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, who faced criticism for mishandling the state.

Khalid has been under heavy scrutiny from his own party congress here after PKR’s loss in the Hulu Selangor by-election and a sand mining scandal. Several delegates have said that Khalid should be replaced if he is not capable of managing the country’s most industrialised state.

Anwar defended his close ally and said that Khalid was a “sincere and clean” leader. “When someone asked me how do I measure someone’s credibility? I said that it is very hard to some a leader who is sincere and clean. Where his record is clean and not corrupt,” the PKR de facto leader said when closing the congress.

He did admit that the state was plagued with problems. “I invited Tan Sri Khalid to join the party, two year later we see problems. What you don’t know is that he does not have the absolute power as the mentri besar. Every step taken there is problems from the University to government agencies.

“We still have problems with religious council. I do not want to use this as an excuse for our not performing because to the rakyat, we cannot say that we have problems. The people want solution. That is why the problem has to be solved,” he said.

Anwar said that slow implementation of policies in Selangor was due to the country’s stagnant economy. “The main problem is the slow implementation of the economic policies because the country’s dismal economy, investments is not coming in. Therefore Selangor must be more aggressive to ensure that projects approval will be expedited,” he said.

The former deputy prime minister also admitted that he needs to perform better as the state’s economic advisor. However he said that the Selangor government has fulfilled its promise of clean government.

“If someone asks me how to evaluate the performance of Tan Sri Khalid or Pakatan Rakyat, what we will say is that the first thing that we promised is a clean and transparent government. With that we defend that Khalid has been successful.

“This is the most important issue because the country is broken due to corruption. This country is broken because ministers and mentri besar take people’s money, shares, land and timber. This is our war because of corrupted leaders that steal from the people. This is will not happen under Tan Sri Khalid. We must explain this matter to the public,” he said.

Anwar also agreed with the delegates demands that the state appoint party members to local government. “I agree with the delegates but the candidate must be qualified. The candidate must only be a professional but have a clean track record. And we must be confident with the candidate because when he is at the helm of any GLCs, he would not be corrupt.  We must give space to Tan Sri Khalid to ensure the right candidate,” he said.

Earlier, party president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail reiterated the need for the members to patient with Khaild.

“Like any renovation, we must do it slowly. If we want to do a proper renovation then we have to do many things. So give him time, please be patient,” she said.

Dr Wan Azizah also warned that party should not be blinded with Putrajaya and not forget the root of their struggle. “I want to give one message that we all have a stake in this party, you are not mere audience. How are you going to contribute to our struggle? Allah can’t change our fate, only we can” she said.

She also had a light moment with the delegates and joked about Anwar. “Syamsul Iskandar earlier said that Anwar belongs to party. Anwar belongs to the people. Hey, he is my man lah,” she said.

Later during a press conference, Anwar said that the party will be looking to strengthening its leadership. “I will discuss with President and deputy president on how we could strengthen the party leadership with new appointments. We will discuss on certain duties in several committees. We will decide on this matter in the next few days,” he said.

Advertisement