Orange Book ‘new social contract’, says Tian Chua
By Yow Hong Chieh, The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, March 13 — Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) Orange Book does not just detail policies but sets out a social contract between the government and the people, PKR vice president Chua Tian Chang said last night.
He said strong voter support in the next general election would turn the manifesto into a contract that bound PR to its “comprehensive” reform promises.
“We have signed a contract with the people,” the Batu MP told some 1,000 supporters who attended the Federal Territory PKR fundraiser at Kelab Sultan Sulaiman here.
He stressed that the Orange Book was the first time in Malaysian history that any party has tried to debate about policy without engaging in the usual mud-slinging and character assassination.
PR has been flogging the Orange Book as an alternative to Barisan Nasional’s (BN) policies in an attempt to win over voters, with mixed success.
Central to the Orange Book is the promise to implement sweeping reforms within the first 100 days of PR seizing Putrajaya.
These include subsidy restructuring, abolition of the Internal Security Act (ISA), raising teachers’ pay and increasing royalties to oil-producing states.
Chua, better known as Tian Chua, also said that PR was banking on the Orange Book to set off yet another “political tsunami” in the wake of the opposition’s notable gains in Election 2008.
He said the recent tsunami that hit Japan proved that such sudden changes were hard to predict and all but impossible to withstand.
