Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin addressed the nation at 6pm this evening (6 October) , and social media channels lit up with all sorts of reactions from netizens ranging from sarcasm, anger, disappointment to plain disbelief.

In an attempt to explain about the sudden increase in COVID-19 cases, the Prime Minister basically blamed cross border infections for the rise in cases in Sabah and went on to talk (at length) about how he strictly followed the SOPs but noticed how many did not.

Spoilet alert: There were no apologies involved.
After going on about how there was no choice but to hold the election in Sabah and his experience there while following all SOPs, he then stated confidently that there were "no double standards" when it came to enforcing the SOPs set in place.

Netizens had quite a lot to say about this comment too.








Rotan baru tau!


And then comes the most "memorable" portion.

While advising the people to strictly adhere to the COVID-19 SOPs, Muhyiddin suggests that he may resort to a more stern approach by jokingly saying this:

"Maaflah jika Abah ini mula menggunakan rotan! Marilah kita hadapi perang menentang Covid-19 secara bersama."

Which roughly translates to...

"Forgive me if Abah (referring to himself) starts using the cane! Let's face this war against COVID-19 together."

Rotan? Abah? Here's what netizens had to say:







We still cannot understand the content and the way it was presented to the people but the facts are, today we had 691 new COVID-19 cases and four deaths.

One of them included a 1-year-old baby girl.

That's NOT a joke and most of us would just rather have stern, fair and stricter enforcement to control the spread and help bring the numbers back down again - without the need to use a rotan.

What do you guys say?