Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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(September 24): Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaders have demanded that Putrajaya explain how many “centuries” of Barisan Nasional (BN) cronies’ lives were sponsored through bailouts and mega projects, in contrast to the aid it provides to ordinary people.

PAS information chief Datuk Mahfuz Omar said the three months of sponsorship that the government claimed to give to the people every year was a pittance compared with the billions allegedly given to cronies such as former Malaysia Airlines chairman Tan Sri Tajudin Ramli.

“The government must answer this question. You settled Tan Sri Tajudin’s debt worth RM500 million, how many months or years or decades of even centuries of free food does he and his family get from that money?” said Mahfuz.

Mahfuz was referring to the government’s decision in 2012 to settle out-of-court the RM589 million in debt owed by Tajudin from a loan he took in 1994 to buy the national flag carrier. The settlement sum was undisclosed.

The Pokok Sena MP also wanted to know how many centuries of free food supplies BN’s cronies received when an estimated RM18 billion of taxpayers’ money from the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) were parked in the Cayman Islands.

“The RM12 billion that disappeared from the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal – how many centuries worth of free food for cronies is that?” he asked.

Last night, Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Ahmad Maslan told a ceramah in Pengkalan Kubor that if all the help the government gave to the people were added up, Malaysians would discover that they only needed to earn a living for nine months in a year.

“If we add up the 1Malaysia People’s Aid (BR1M), the school aid, subsidies for petrol, diesel, flour, rice and cooking oil, I believe three months of our lives are sponsored by the BN government every year,” said Maslan, adding that PAS had given nothing.

But Mahfuz said that PAS as a party and a state government in Kelantan had done all it could to provide for the people.

He said that unlike Umno, PAS did not feel that they had to bring up their contributions as they knew they were simply carrying out their responsibility as elected representatives of the people.

“He shouldn’t have even brought up how much the BN government is helping the rakyat – it’s their responsibility as a government in the first place to spend on the people.”

DAP organising secretary Anthony Loke said Ahmad could not seem to grasp the duties and purpose of a government.

The Seremban MP said Ahmad Maslan appeared to have forgotten that the money the government spent for the rakyat came from the rakyat themselves, and not the leaders’ own pockets.

“I don’t think he understands the concept of governance. It involves taxing the people, so that the government can collect the revenue and allocate it back to the people.

“He thinks BN are the masters of the people. This is just ridiculous. But coming from Ahmad Maslan, it’s not so surprising,” added Loke.

He said Ahmad Maslan appeared to believe Malaysians were uneducated fools who did not understand where their tax money went to.

“Let me remind him that whatever the government allocates to the rakyat through subsidies, all that money comes from taxpayers. So to say that Putrajaya sponsors our lives is ridiculous.”

 

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