KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 16 — The National Security Council should acknowledge its failures during the recent flood crisis instead of trying to justify its response by comparing the Malaysian disaster to the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, DAP’s Lim Kit Siang said.

Lim said although the floods that ravaged Kelantan and the east coast of the peninsula had resulted in deaths, destroyed homes and losses amounting to billions of ringgit, the catastrophe was not in the magnitude of the Japanese disaster.

“Even in his interview with Malay Mail Online yesterday, Thajudeen was clearly more interested in looking for excuses for the lack of leadership, particularly the failure to declare a state of emergency, and the sub-par disaster response, relief and reconstruction phases of the 2014 Floods Catastrophe,” Lim said in a statement today.

In an exclusive interview with Malay Mail Online recently, Thajudeen compared the recent floods that ravaged Kelantan to the tsunami that hit Japan following the 2011 Tohuku earthquake and which led to the worst nuclear accidents since Chernobyl.

The NSC official pointed out that Japan, despite all their preparations, still encountered huge challenges when the country was hit by the earthquake and resultant tsunami that reportedly killed almost 20,000 people and struck the Fukushima nuclear plant in northeast Japan.

He added that the Kelantan floods had been so severe that it caused the collapse of the Kelantan District Office that was in charge of disaster management, preventing the NSC from coordinating and receiving information from them.

Thajudeen further said there were initially problems coordinating with Kelantan authorities until Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin formed a joint committee, noting that the opposition state ruled by PAS had a different way of running things.

Lim today rubbished Thajudeen’s response as an attempt to gloss over the shortfalls in the NSC’s Disaster Management Preparedness, which he said caused authorities to be ill-prepared.

“As a result, we have the shocking episode of the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak only realising that the floods disaster was a ‘major catastrophe’ on the fourth day of his return after cutting short his vacation in Hawaii, after he had visited the two worst flood-stricken districts of Gua Musang and Kuala Krai,” he added.

The Gelang Patah MP said that the current situation and Thajudeen’s statements also warranted his call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) to carry out a comprehensive review of the government’s Disaster Management Preparedness.

The floods that struck the east coast of peninsular Malaysia last month were the worst in the country in decades, displacing hundreds of thousands from their homes.