A commentary by Zaidi AzmiSeptember 10, 2019
IN his latest bid to rekindle the nearly-extinguished fire on Lynas, DAP’s Wong Tack has once again accused the government of delivering a sales pitch on behalf of the Australian rare-earth refiner.
This time around, the alleged salesman of Lynas were officers from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), who Wong insisted have published an infographic debunking controversial claims the former had levelled against the company.In addition to that, Wong also believed that these PMO officers have gone rogue and were acting without the knowledge of Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Therefore, he urged the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to probe the outfit.
Gosh! What a claim.If this was a Pokemon video game, Wong now basically has no energy left to deliver any significant attack and is left to rely on the default desperation move called struggle which does chip damage – a video game term for little damage.“Notice how Wong did not say that the facts in the infographic were wrong. Also, is he saying that the PMO cannot disseminate correct information to the public? This is what happens when a politician has no other platform to stand on,” said a PMO officer.Even if what Wong claimed was true, why on earth did he merely urge the MACC to probe?
If he felt so strongly about it, then the most apt and normal way to spur the graft buster into action was to lodge a formal report.Has he done so? No, he has not…at least not yet.So was the accusation by Wong a mere lip service just to show proof to his supporters that his environmentalist moxy still burns brightly? Who knows, but when it comes to environmentalism, Wong hardly ever harped on nothing but Lynas.
He made almost zero notable stink about the debilitating air pollution at Pasir Gudang which has yet to be solved since early May despite the situation there proved to be way more toxic than that of Lynas’.
Wong has also been silent over the smothering bouts of Indonesia-borne haze that had been engulfing Malaysia since early last month despite the fact that Indonesian president Joko Widodo came to Malaysia a week after the haze alert was announced.
Even more peculiar was the fact that Wong, after Pakatan Harapan won the May 9 national polls, last year, is now the chairman of the Malaysian Timber Industry Board.Wait, what!?What a twist. The so-called guardian of mother nature, who in November last year launched the “Plant a million trees in Bentong” campaign now chairs a board that manages Malaysia’s commercial logging?
Ah, the irony of Malaysian politics.Oh, by the way, the million saplings that were planted during the launching of Wong’s campaign had all died in April this year, due to what was reported to be poor and half-hearted management.
Sheesh, what a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Wong’s hoo-haa on the PMO however, was quite odd as the same information that the outfit relayed to the public was sourced from the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB).And since the AELB is an outfit under the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change, will Wong also go after the two and accuse them for their alleged ‘Lynas hard sell.’Oops, my bad, he already did so in November last year.
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