KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 30 — Lim Kit Siang today warned that Malaysia faces the real risk of becoming a “rogue and failed state” due to the ongoing crisis of confidence in its government, even as the country rose two ranks to 18th on the Global Competitiveness Report 2015-2016.

The DAP parliamentary leader said the improvement in Malaysia’s competitiveness rating by the World Economic Forum is something to be proud of, but claimed that the “almost perfect storm” facing Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s administration could easily undermine whatever gains the country has made.

From the sharp decline in the value of the ringgit to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and RM2.6 billion donation fiascos, Lim said the crisis of confidence in Putrajaya has reached a point that the public are now seriously debating the issue of a parliamentary motion of no confidence in the prime minister.

“The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Abdul Wahid Omar, has described the economic quandary Najib has placed the country in as ‘an almost perfect storm’, but claimed that Malaysia was better placed than in the 1990s Asian financial crisis to ride out the hard times,” Lim said in a statement.

“But there is one great difference in the ‘almost perfect storm’ today than the crisis the country faced in the late 90s — that Malaysia has now not only a minority, but the most unpopular,  Prime Minister in history heading  a fractured nation,  a fractured government and a fractured Umno,” he added.

Lim said it now falls on all Malaysians to come together and hold the country’s leaders to account and stop it from descending into a rogue and failed state that has no regard for the rule of law, dismantles the independence and professionalism of key national institutions and allows rampant corruption and abuses of power.

“The question is whether there are enough Malaysians to save Malaysia — for Malaysians  to come together, not as Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Dayaks, or Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Taoists, but as Malaysians to save the Malaysian nation from the fate of a rogue and failed state,” he said.