BN prime ministers will suck the rakyat dry
Chua delivering his ceramah in Padang Jalan Danau 17, Desa Jaya, Tebrau on Feb 28,
2013. It was PKR’s first ever public rally in Taman Desa Jaya and it attracted
a respectable 1,500 evenly mixed crowd of Chinese, Indians and Malays.
WHY
do you think the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) became super efficient after
Mahathir Mohamad stepped down as prime minister in October 2003?
Because
the national treasury was empty and income tax was a main source of income to
keep the government afloat. It was then incoming prime minister Abdullah Ahmad
Badawi who confided in me that Mahathir had left him with an empty federal
treasury.
Of
course there was also Petronas and plenty of borrowings to keep Abdullah’s
administration going.
Unfortunately
for Malaysians, the man who was once regarded by the rakyat as “Mr Clean”, extended Mahathir’s excessiveness in milking
the country’s wealth dry.
Abdullah
relied heavily on internal and external borrowings to finance mega projects but
did nothing to reduce the ballooning federal debts until his downfall in 2009
following the March 2008 political tsunami.
Abdullah’s
successor, Najib Abdul Razak, not only extended the government’s borrowings, he
and his wife Rosmah went on a spending spree, resulting in accumulating more
than RM520 billion in federal debts.
Umno
prime ministers, like Abdullah and Najib, are all the same.
They
have no intention whatsoever to help the rakyat
or country. They just use their power to enrich themselves and their cronies
with billion-ringgit projects and monopolies.
Since
the national treasury was empty, the NRD was then beefed up to do national
service for Barisan Nasional (BN).
In
2010, Najib’s NRD collected RM85 billion in taxes followed with another RM125
billion in 2011.
BN
prime ministers will always continue to squeeze the rakyat until their “blood runs dry”.
It
is estimated that if BN is not stopped from their wayward ways, the federal
debt will hit RM1 trillion by 2020.
Should
the people give their mandate to Pakatan Rakyat (PR) to govern after the coming
13th General Election (GE13), we should be able to heal the
country’s financial standing over time and also launch people-centric fiscal
policies to help ease the rakyat’s
financial burden.
One half of the 1,500-strong crowd at
PKR’s ceramah in Taman Desa Jaya,
Tebrau, on Feb 28, 2013.
We
can surely do this with the tens of billions of ringgit in savings from the BN
government’s leakages, corruption and inefficiency.
Just
give us one term to prove our worth. The next general election is the only
chance for change in this century for Malaysians.
We
have revealed our action plans for the rakyat
and Malaysia in our election manifesto.
Some
of the key measures to help ease the rakyat’s
financial woes are:
Ø YEARLY automatic
RM1,000 deposits into the accounts of Malaysians aged 60 and above;
Ø THE scrapping of
the Automated Enforcement System (AES) which BN cronies aimed to collect some
RM20 billion in speeding compound fines from 832 cameras nationwide. BN has
temporarily suspended the AES due to GE13;
Ø THERE will be no
1Care as proposed by the BN federal government represented by Health Minister
Liow Tiong Lai. 1Care makes it mandatory for all Malaysians to contribute 10%
of their salary, just like EPF deductions, for health insurance. No insurance,
no health service or admissions to hospitals. Guess who benefits from the
billions of ringgit in collections? Of course BN cronies. PR will ensure
healthcare is free to the rakyat.
Ø Toll collections
will be scrapped in stages;
Ø The retail price
of fuel will be lowered to reduce the cost of transportation thereby causing a
domino effect in lowering the price of goods and services;
Ø Education will
not only be free for all from primary to tertiary levels, all schools will
receive yearly allocations at RM300 per pupil;
Ø Electricity
tariffs will be reduced by removing the RM25 billion subsidy for the rich crony
Independent Power Producers (IPPs) who sell their electricity to Tenaga
Nasional (TNB) at high rates; and
Ø Taxi permits
will be given to all individual cabbies and permits for crony corporates will be
revoked.
The other half of the 1,500-strong crowd
at PKR’s ceramah Taman Desa Jaya,
Tebrau, on Feb 28, 2013.
At
PR’s recent national convention in Shah Alam, four retired military generals,
two from the army and one each from the navy and air force, have revealed that
high procurements without tender had cost the government some RM75 billion.
That
includes submarines that can’t dive and jets that did not have engines.
According
to the generals, Special Branch (police) and military intelligence, PR is
expected to upset BN and create electoral history in GE13.
They
also opined that there would not be any unrest should PR win GE13 because the
Armed Forces will be with the rakyat.
