Khalid: Reduce fuel price or be ready to go

Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim today fired a warning shot to the BN government to reduce the price of fuel by managing the economy better or be prepared to be crushed by the rakyat.

Addressing the crowd at today's anti-oil hike rally at the Kelana Jaya stadium, Khalid reminded the BN government that its decision to increase fuel price last month had angered the public.

"If the BN government does not safeguard the welfare of the rakyat, they will crush you," said Khalid, who added that the fuel price increase was due to poor economic management by the BN government.

The Selangor MB then sarcastically drew comparisons between the Pakatan Rakyat-led Selangor government's manner of fulfilling its promise to reduce economic burdens of the people to its BN rivals.

"What the Pakatan government did in Selangor was to provide free 20 cubic meter of water to its citizens to help them cope with the rising prices but what the BN government did was instead raising the fuel price by 40 percent," said Khalid, eliciting a loud roar from the crowd.

The pump price of petrol rocketed 41 percent to RM2.70 a litre while diesel shot up 63 percent to RM2.58 per litre beginning June 5.

The heat from the afternoon sun did not deter the Pakatan followers from listening to Khalid's speech. They sat patiently and attentively from the stadium's terraces while he spoke.

For Khalid, the fuel price hike was an obvious sign that the BN government was a regime that had forgotten about fundamental democracy - that the government is by the people and for the people.

"We at the Pakatan instead is a government elected by the people and for the people whereas the BN is a government that decides on its own what is best for the rakyat," said Khalid.

Redistribute Petronas' profits

Khalid said that the federal government has raked in billions of profits from the national oil company Petronas but the acquired wealth was not trickling at the right places.

"We have all these announcements (by the BN government) about setting up all these multi-billion corridor projects but who are these projects for?" asked Khalid.

"If it was the Pakatan government that managed Petronas' profits, we would redistribute them to the people and make sure that they would know what the money was being spent on," added Khalid.

This was not politicking, claimed Khalid, but an economic policy that the Pakatan believed in.

"If they say that our ideas are inconceivable, I suggest they take an economic course with me," said Khalid, who was once chief executive officer of giant corporation Sime Darby.

BN leaders have so many times ridiculed claims made by their Pakatan counterparts that it was unfeasible to reduce price hike.

One of the major figures leading the assault on Pakatan's ideas of reducing fuel price was Rembau MP and Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin.

Khalid towards the end of his speech fired a salvo at the Rembau MP and said that he too needed an economic course with him as the latter clearly knows little about it.