Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Senator Koh Tsu Koon has lashed out at both DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang and his son, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, for being ‘leaders who oppose for the sake of opposing’.

penang gerakan agm 260910 koh tsu koon Kit Siang received the first salvo for denouncing Prime Minister’s Najib Abdul Razak’s Economic Transformation Programme as ‘rich in rhetoric, business-school cliches and lofty speeches’.

Koh ( left ), who is also Gerakan president, chided Kit Siang for being ‘unfair and insulting’ to the 500-odd participants, mostly corporate and business representatives, who attended the programme on Tuesday.

According to Koh, Kit Siang had also insulted the 5,000 people who attended Najib’s open house on the same day.

teoh beng hock memorial night 160710 kit siang Kit Siang ( right ), Koh added, sounded ‘frantic and desperate’ in his criticisms about the programme, though which the former did not attend.

“Those who did not attend the programme are not qualified to talk about it,”Koh told about 200 delegates who attended Penang Gerakan’s annual general meeting today.

“This is the kind of leaders who oppose for the sake of opposing,” he added.

Kit Siang, who is also Ipoh Timur MP, had also criticised the ETP, unveiled on Tuesday, as being based on ‘unrealistic assumptions about the country’s economic growth prospects’.

He also compared the government’s ambitious programme to that of a command economy and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

The government had said its ETP targets are to be achieved through 131 Entry Point Projects and 60 business opportunities, with 92 percent of the funding to come from the private sector.

lim guan eng pc on doctored pix and penang bridge 25th anniversary Later, Koh turned his ire towards the junior Lim ( left ) for demanding the abolition of tolls for Penang, rebuking Guan Eng for making it sound as if the matter can be easily implemented.

‘During my time...’  

Koh said that during his term as chief minister of Penang, before March 2008, the state government had consistently negotiated with the federal government to keep the rates down to RM7.00.

He added that the rates had not increased since 1985, when the bridge was launched.

However, when there was a proposal to increase the rates to RM9.40, Koh himself had met Najib and Works Minister Shaziman Abu Mansor to ensure it did not happen.

“Although there is an agreement, we continued to bargain and argue for the toll rates to remain,” he said.

“Of course we didn’t publicise it or show off. We do our work, then we move on,” he added.

zahrain hashim parliament 180310 He criticised Guan Eng’s approach to the matter as being simplistic, saying that as an accountant, the latter should realise that many factors must be considered before a decision is taken by the government.

 “Of course he (Guan Eng) can give speeches like (former Indonesian leader) Sukarno and (German dictator Adolf) Hitler, he is clever to talk. But what is the solution?” he queried.

Former PKR Bayan Baru parliamentarian Zahrain Hashim ( right ), who has since become independent, had earlier this year called Guan Eng a "dictator, a chauvinist and communist-minded ".