Friday 29 Mar 2024
By
main news image

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on August 17, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Former ministers from the Barisan Nasional coalition have derided Pakatan Harapan’s 10 promises in the first 100 days, saying that they were unattainable to begin with.

Former second finance minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani told The Edge Financial Daily that Pakatan has only realised now that all of the things that its members have criticised in the past are not that simple and straightforward to implement, now that it is the government.

“I have yet to see how they (the Pakatan government) can reduce government expenditures by RM20 billion annually to cover the deficit of GST (goods and services tax) revenue without introducing any new tax on the rakyat,” he said, referring to one of the claims that Pakatan made when it was in the opposition.

“All those promises that Pakatan made to the rakyat are still outstanding such as cancelling toll roads, fixing petrol price at RM1.50 and deferring PTPTN (Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional) payments. I don’t think they can fulfil them. Those promises are simply not practical,” Johari added.

Former minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said also concurred that it is good to see the previous opposition coalition is now the government as they can understand how difficult it is to run the country.

“It is not that easy [because] there are lot of things to evaluate, especially in a multiracial and multireligious country like ours,” she told reporters at the Parliament lobby yesterday.

Johari believes that the abolishment of the GST is a wrong move by the government as he claimed that it is an effective tax system to reduce the black economy, and is good for the country and rakyat in the long run.

“They should not have cancelled the GST. They should just reduce the GST rate from 6% to 4% to please the rakyat,” he said, offering an alternative to reduce the burden on the rakyat.

However, Azalina pointed out that the Pakatan government will deliver on its election promises “at all cost” because voters’ expectations are high.

“I think PM (Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad) himself has admitted that maybe they have oversold the manifesto. But in most countries, a political manifesto is considered as a promise, so this is what they will do, and deliver at all cost.

“I believe the voters also voted on the manifesto. So of course, the expectation [on the government] is high,” she said.

Moving forward, Johari hoped that the government will focus on growing the economy by implementing the right economic policies for the benefit of the rakyat. Instead of putting out political statements to blame the previous government on the economy, he said, the government should work towards building confidence among both domestic and international investors.

“Come out with a concrete plan on how to reduce [the] unemployment rate among graduates. The government must also put forward a strategy to reduce reliance on foreign workers,” he said.

Separately, Dr Mahathir admitted that he is not sure that the five-year term is enough for the Pakatan government to rectify the country’s problems. Although he gave his assurance that most of the issues will be resolved, the prime minister indicated that more time was needed to fulfil all the promises in its election manifesto.

“The manifesto was written on the basis of what we knew about what the government was doing. But when we took over, we found that the situation is much worse, and much more money was borrowed,” he told reporters after the launch of Cardiac Vascular Sentral Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

“The machinery of the government has been subverted. We find ourselves working in an environment that is not really dedicated to what we want to do. [That’s why] we need to remove some people. All these things hinder progress,” Dr Mahathir added.

He noted that some of the reform initiatives need to be passed by Parliament, hence fulfilling Pakatan’s promises requires more time than initially planned.

“So while we made a promise that we should do things in [the first] 100 days, the most we could do was to start these things,” he added.

      Print
      Text Size
      Share