Wanita Gerakan deputy chief Ng Siew Lai has reaffirmed Gerakan’s stand to fight for and protect the rights and welfare of women in the country. Gerakan stands firm in this objective and strive for it. This includes Wanita Gerakan stands in the front line to support 90-day women’s maternity leave policy.

This statement is to response to the incident occurred from discussion among Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia Youth Chief in Kedah Tan Keng Liang and friends in Twitter. The discussion had been interpreted negatively by someone with the political agenda and deliberately enlarged it to gain political supports.

Ng stated, Gerakan always actively participates in fighting for women’s rights, including fully support and encourage women to participate in the job market and politics. When she was a YB in 2002, she was pregnant and applied for maternity leave. However, with the fully support from the party, she managed to make proper arrangement so that her assistants able to continue running the activities in the service area and servicing the voters. Therefore, the works were not affected.

As a representative of people, YB should give clear explanation to electorates when applying for long holiday or maternity leave. In that period of time, arrangement of assistants should be made wisely to continue serving the electorates but not politicize the issue and neglect the needs of people.

Ng said, Tan Keng Liang was having discussion with friends in private so it should not be distorted and politicized by pointing to Gerakan. Regretfully, this will deny all of the efforts and contributions of Gerakan in fighting for women’s rights.

“After the incident, I had contacted Tan and he told me that he does not mean to offend women but someone had deliberately distorted the original intent and caused misinterpretation.”

Ng said, “Anyway, after listening to the explanation from Tan, I still think that if that particular YB or all women in Malaysia feel that they are being offended, Wanita Gerakan supposes Tan should pull-back his comment publicly.”