Surendran said PR states could not resolve the problems faced by the Indians without financial backing from the federal government.
“Indeed, the problems facing marginalised sections of the Indian and other communities have always been a priority for PKR and other Pakatan component parties.
“These problems are caused entirely by the blatant neglect and indifference of the BN federal government towards these marginalised communities over the past 50 years,” he said in a statement last night.
He added that Putrajaya needed political will to bring comprehensive change to the community.
Surendran also denied PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had suggested a meeting with Hindraf founder P. Uthayakumar and that he (Surendran) had been tasked to form a three-man committee to look into Indian grouses.
Yesterday, The Malaysian Insider reported Anwar had met with PKR’s Indian leaders, leaders of Indian NGOs and individuals sympathetic to Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in a bid to reignite the Indian community’s support for PR.
About 60 people attended the two-hour, closed-door meeting at the PKR headquarters last week.
Sources also told The Malaysian Insider that Anwar informed the meeting that he would take up the “Uthayakumar matter” with Pakatan leaders like PAS president Datuk Seri Hadi Awang and DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang.
The meeting discussed the reasons why Indian voters were now leaning towards BN after voting overwhelmingly for PR in the 2008 general election.
PR leaders have admitted to The Malaysian Insider that the ruling coalition had gained substantial momentum in the past two years due to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s policies and 1 Malaysia platform.
They have conceded to losing at least 60 per cent of Indian community support to BN in the next elections.
They also admitted that the “Hindraf sentiment” from pre-Election 2008 had long run out of steam.
The Indian community was once seen as a vote bank for BN but Hindraf’s 2007 march in Kuala Lumpur blew the lid off the community’s simmering frustration at being marginalised in the country’s development.
A majority of Tamils came as labourers who worked on the rubber and oil palm estates but a change from an agrarian to an industrialised economy sidelined them to menial jobs and gangsterism.
The ISA detention of Hindraf leaders after the march was seen as a major factor that swung Indian voters to the opposition in Election 2008, denying the BN government its customary two-thirds majority in Parliament and handing four more states to the PR parties.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment