By Jenne Lajiun
Hajiji asks Kapitans to help BN regain Chinese support
KOTA KINABALU: Chinese Kapitans in Sabah were yesterday urged to play their part to win back the hearts of the Chinese people for Barisan Nasional (BN).
Local Government and Housing Minister Datuk Hajiji Haji Noor said during a meeting with Sabah Chinese community leaders at the TH Hotel near here that BN had lost a lot of support from the Chinese community in the 13th general election last year.
“A lot of people from the Chinese community had rendered their support to the opposition last year...the role of Chinese leaders are to explain the goodness of the government and the lies told by the opposition,” he said.
He mentioned t hat the Chinese community had benefited with BN being the ruling party for so long.
“Only Malaysia has Chinese vernacular schools. Even our neighbours, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines do not have Chinese schools. Singapore with its majority Chinese population also doesn’t have Chinese schools,” he said.
He added that Chinese schools were popular amongst the locals and stated that in Tuaran, more than 50 percent of the students attending Chinese schools were the children of Bumiputeras.
“So a lot of Bumiputeras are now versed in the Chinese language since they started studying it at kindergarten,” he said.
Aside from that, the Chinese and other races residing in the country were also allowed to practise their own cultures and religions, he said.
“We are extremely lucky to be blessed with a nation of various races and religion,” he said.
He also urged Chinese community leaders to remind the Chinese community, particularly those residing in urban areas that they were enjoying much more facilities than the rural Bumiputera folks in Sabah.
He added that the government wanted to bring development and basic amenities such as clean water supply to the Bumiputera folk in rural Sabah too and urged the Chinese urban community to understand this.
He reminded that the aspiration of the country to become a developed nation was merely six years away and that it was the ambition of the government to provide basic infrastructures to the rural parts of the country by that time.
Hajiji re-iterated that the BN government aspired to win back the support of the Chinese community and urged Chinese community leaders to do their part to explain government policies and to ensure that the present government continued getting the people’s support.
“Explain to the community, particularly the youths, not to listen to the opposition. Explain to them how lucky they are,” he said.
He admitted t hat the BN government cannot fulfill all the aspirations and needs of the people at once because it has limited resources and has its own shortcomings.
“But don’t al low the slight weaknesses to be a reason for the people to stop their support for the government,” he said.
Some 130 Chinese community leaders or Kapitans attended the event yesterday.
Also at the event was Bongawan assemblyman Mohamad Alamin.