Muhyiddin claims deception in Pakatan promises

Melissa Chi


PUTRAJAYA, Dec 21 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) can “promise you the moon” but whether it can deliver is a totally different thing, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today in response to a slew of promises announced last weekend by the opposition coalition.

The deputy prime minister claimed that PR was making many ambitious promises, just like in previous elections.

“Are they capable of fulfilling all their promises? Because in the previous election, they had promised many things, in Selangor and in the few other states that they had won, I know until today those promises were not fulfilled,” he claimed.

Among the instant reforms promised by the PR coalition, within the first 100 days of taking over Putrajaya, is acknowledging the role and sacrifices of civil servants by studying the current pay schemes and increasing the incentives for teachers by RM500 a month.

“We need to take all of their proposals and study them for what they truly mean,” Muhyiddin told reporters after the Cabinet Committee on Youth Development meeting today.

“Maybe because they think the elections are coming; I don’t know but they seemed to know more than us and they want to entice voters with special offers, but the main thing is this is about the government and the country’s future,” he emphasised.

Snap polls are being anticipated next year with both the Barisan Nasional (BN) and PR already on election footing.

“They only made offers without considering whether they can deliver. This is a big deception, a lie. So don’t get caught up with the promises that if they become the government, they will give every teacher RM500,” he said.

Muhyiddin, also the education minister, said there are almost 400,000 teachers, which would translate into spending an extra RM200 million a month, and RM2.4 billion a year, for example.

He added that other civil servants should not be ignored if the teachers were to get the extra incentives, saying the whole thing will snowball into a huge amount of money.

“We can go bankrupt. So they can make such offers but they don’t have the experience to lead the federal government. Every single decision we make, we have to study in detail, what the consequences could be,” he said.

No comments

Powered by Blogger.