Datuk Robert Lau Hoi Chew's Blog

Delivering on Promise, Deciding the Future

// February 3rd, 2010 // Featured Articles

1. Politics is number game, whose strengths rest on the number of Members of Parliament (MPs) or Ahli Dewan Undangan Negeri (ADUN) of a political party in the Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Undangan Negeri (DUN) respectively.
2. Therefore, the ultimate aim of every political party including our Party SUPP, is to make sure that we win all the seats allocated to our Party, both in the Parliamentary and State election.
3. Every political party, including our Party, may have grandeurs vision, yet we have to be realistic and practical in our pursuit to achieve the maximum efficiency in delivering our services to the people while maintaining the strength of our Party.
4. It is of utmost importance for every Party member to understand the reality of politics, particularly within the framework of Barisan Nasional (BN), where not every BN component party can achieve 100% aspiration of each individual component party.
5. Therefore, all Party members must condition our minds to sell this idea to our voters, particularly the urban Chinese voters, that the time has come for them to realize this very important reality of politics in order for them to be able to vote wisely to ensure their own race will not be marginalized politically, economically and socially.
6. However, our Party leaders and members must face another reality of politics, which is, the opposition parties can promise anything to the people without delivering them, and yet time and time again, they have achieved considerable success in catching the votes, particularly for the urban areas, which consist of majority Chinese voters.
7. The Malaysian opposition party’s tactic to catching votes is very similar and comparable to the election tactics used by Taiwan’s Chen Shui Bian who bind the “Enter United Nations (UN) General Referendum” with the coming 2008 presidential election in Taiwan, knowing very well that it is impossible for Taiwan to enter UN without the consent of China. This tactic is very simple. Every politician, including the BN and the opposition parties, clearly understand the ideal and ultimate aspiration and requests of the people. Therefore, if you dare to speak out in perfect consonant of the ultimate wish, you will give them a dose of political ecstasy temporarily, but is strong and long enough temporarily to influence them to vote for you.
8. The opposition party knows very well the next government will be a BN government. Therefore they can daringly promise to the voters in tune with the ultimate aspiration and needs of the people, knowing that they will not be responsible to realize and deliver their promises.
9. On the other hand, the candidate for the BN will have to be truthful to the political reality, and they cannot promise like opposition parties because they have to deliver their promise after winning the election.
10. Therefore, I say, during the election campaign, the opposition has no choice because all they can do is to promise, promise and promise, but no need to realize any promise, whereas BN candidates have to be “promise-cautious” as they have to answerable to what they have promised to the people. But, the people have the choice. The vote is in your hand to support the opposition or the BN. I want to tell the voters, particularly the urban Chinese voters that we should realise that the opposition’s promise is only the daydreaming of Utopia floating in the air, in tune to the voters’ ultimate aspiration. The voters should come down to the ground and reality and support BN for a practical, sustainable and achievable political, economical and social vision and goal.
11. A word of caution to the opposition party leaders as well as our own Party leaders that in political struggles, we should not aim to win a battle and losing the war.
12. We should have a self-esteem conscience and the political will to tell the truth to the people and to ourselves. This needs political wisdom to achieve it.
13. This means the opposition winning more seats will seriously weaken the strength and representation in the government resulting in the development of the opposition areas being marginalised.
14. If more BN Chinese candidates lose their seats, similarly the interest and strength of the Chinese race will be weakened and marginalised!
15. The majority of Bumiputra voters subscribe to political logic and reality that their interest depends on the strength of their representation in the government and certainly not on the opposition.
16. Why Chinese voters can’t see the political logic and reality in the same way?

1. Recently I read a quotation by Mr. Gao Xi Jun in a weekly magazine. The English word VICTORY can be designated to identify the components of VICTORY, namely, Vision, Integrity, Commitment, Talent, Openness, Reconciliation, Youth.
2. I am very pleased to see that our Central Youth chief, Comrade Alan Sim has been nominated by our Party to contest in Bandar Kuching parliamentary seat. I am confident that all our Party Youth wing members will be inspired to go all out in our various constituencies, working together with the Women wing and the senior Party members and cadres to achieve 100% victory in the coming parliamentary election for our Party. I would like to appeal to all our Party members and leaders to emulate the formula and components of VICTORY as I stated above to be part of our political culture in our endeavour to provide service to the people, our nation and our Party.

1. In 1982, when the then Datuk Dr. Wong Soon Kai lost the Parliamentary seat in Sibu, a few of young people, including myself, felt that it was time for us to join SUPP and play our humble role and contribute our fair share towards the strengthening of the oldest multi-racial political party, SUPP in Sarawak. It is a new lease of my life.
2. Before I joined politics, I have been active in social activities through LIONS Clubs, school boards of management, old students’ association, YMCA, church committees, etc, which at that time I felt that I could play an efficient role in helping the less fortunate fellow human being in our community as well as helping the education and religious development. Since I became a BN MP for Sibu, I realised that I could do much more for the people through the various channels in the BN government. For those who have not had the exposure of both inside and outside the government, they might not feel the political reality.
3. Being a BN MP, beside the fact that I could bring small development to the community through MRP fund and other allocation from various federal government ministries, I found that I could help people to appeal to the various government agencies on matters ranging from passport, citizenship, birth certificate, scholarship, getting medical care in government hospital including Institut Jantung Negara (IJN), etc. When I was appointed as the Chairman of Sibu Municipal Council in 1999, suddenly I found a greater platform for me as an BN MP working as a team under Sibu BN Development Visionary Team headed by Y.B. Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh, we could efficiently transform Sibu into a more orderly, cleaner and beautiful town and provide a more conducive living environment for the for the 230,000 Sibu people. The changes, including the town traffic system, town beautification, settlement of hawkers, building of multi-storey car park, getting rid of rearing chicken and duck in the densely populated areas, getting rid of stray dogs on the roads and create a concept of street garden, getting rid of rubbish bin from the road side and motivate the community to adopt open space as sponsored community gardens, etc.
4. The Sibu BN Visionary Development Team could achieve the above tasks based on a very transparent and united team work spirit and team leadership. Before making any major decision, we will hold brainstorming sessions at the BN Team level and then they are implemented by the various agencies, such as Sibu Municipal Council (SMC), Sibu Rural District Council (SRDC), Jabatan Kerja Raya (JKR) Water Board, Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID), Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation (SESCO), Telekom and other statutory bodies. This system minimises the opportunity for those selfish minority to appeal to higher authority to stop certain actions by the government agencies such as the SMC for their own selfish aims. Through the team effort, we also successfully relocated and helped to rebuild a few Chinese primary schools from rural areas to Sibu, which are facing being closed down due to lack to student to urban densely populated areas in Sibu with land granted by the government. We even managed to help relocating one independent Chinese secondary school from Sibu to Bintulu and another Chinese primary school from Sibu to Limbang in addition to those school relocations within their respective divisions.
5. For the past few parliamentary and state elections, we marketed Sibu BN Development Visionary Team as a brand name to the people to project a visionary and efficient team to bring development to Sibu. Maybe this is the reason why Sibu could withstand the onslaught of 2006 state election where there was a massive swing of urban votes to the opposition who successfully exploited a few issues including land issue, fuel price increase, etc.
6. We know during the coming parliamentary election, the opposition will use the same tactic to stir up the various issues such as land issue, fuel price increase, security and in the case of Sibu, why Sibu has not have a university campus? Our Party has to be ready to counter their attack. I feel strongly that we should market our Party’s political roadmap for economic development to be brought around by the political stability and the participation in the government to enhance the livelihood of the people. At the same time, we should impress the low income group voters that the economic development will alleviate them from the poverty vicious circle through creation of jobs and the provision of affordable tertiary education and skill training. As Sibu has been designated by Y.A.B. Chief Minister of Sarawak as a service industry centre of Sarawak, we should highlight those economic activities such as tourism, higher education, ICT, outsourcing in addition to our very strong basic industry such as timber, ship building and agriculture.
7. Sibu BN Development Visionary Team, through the various channels and the position held by the team members in the government, has successfully implemented major infrastructure such as 4 bridges across Rajang and Igan Rivers, outer ring road, Sibu Airport runway extension, to name a few.
8. Sibu BN Development Visionary Team is also fighting to get the fund for the implementation of the Sibu Airport Terminal Building project (costing around RM100 million) during the mid-term review of the 9th Malaysia Plan, as well as the RM400 million allocations for the flood mitigation project for Sibu town. Another major project, Program Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) (500 units costing about RM50 million) and an indoor stadium (with capacity for 5,000 people, costing RM40 million) need BN representation in the Parliament to fight for early implementation.
9. For 2008, Sarawak will get RM4 billion extra and part of it will be used to upgrade the Kuching-Sibu Trunk Road. Sibu BN Team is fighting for more funds to extend this upgrading programme to cover Sibu-Bintulu-Miri section of Pan Borneo Highway.
10. All these are only possible through the relentless effort of the BN Wakil Rakyat.
11. Comrade Datuk Tiong Thai King and myself, for the past years have managed to bring tens of millions of Ringgit of development fund to improve infrastructure of Sibu town area, particularly when SMC and SRDC development funds have been reduced considerably in the last few years.

1. Since the timber industry can no longer continuously bring sustainable economic development to Sibu, the economic development roadmap for Sibu has to be creatively and boldly charted up to bring about the relevant change and diversify the economic activities in order to sustain the economic development in Sibu. The Sibu BN Development Visionary team has already conducted numerous brainstorming with the professionals, the government agencies and the community leaders. Finally we formulated the proposed future economic development master plan for Sibu (including a proposed world class Riviera City) in tune with the second wave of development motivated by Y.A.B. Chief Minister of Sarawak with Sibu as a service industry centre for Sarawak state.
2. Therefore, Sibu people must realise that in order to implement this diversified wider economy based development, it is more necessary and relevant to have our Wakil Rakyat representing the Sibu people in the BN state and federal government.

1. Fellow comrades, the coming parliamentary election is a very challenging battle to win. We need all the political will, wisdom and determination to instil the confidence into the minds of the voters, particularly the urban Chinese voters that our Party, SUPP is still one of the important BN component political parties which will bring economic development and a conducive living environment for them both in the rural and urban areas in the coming years. In Sibu context, Sibu people must realise that the time is running out for them to realise how important, actually to their own interest to support SUPP BN candidate in Sibu so that Sibu will not be left out in the mainstream of economic development in the context of Sarawak Economic Development Corridor. We appeal to the opposition party leaders that if they really have the interest of the people at heart, they still can play a role of so-called supervision outside of the government while letting the people elect BN candidates into the government to work for the betterment of the live of Sibu people.

SA’ATI!