YOURSAY | ‘Just cut it out, Bersatu info chief Wan Saiful’

Harapan liked to 'cut here, cut there' during its time in power - Wan Saiful

Freethinker: Bersatu information chief Wan Saiful Wan Jan has claimed that Pakatan Harapan’s main policies involved slashing allocations, regardless of the people’s needs and that the coalition liked to “cut here, cut there” when it was in power.

Perikatan Nasional (PN) is dishing out cash that we don't have. Just imagine if all the leakages were reduced by 10 percent (it is impossible to eliminate leakage totally anyway), the rakyat would have been in a better place today.

Imagine if Malaysia had an extra RM2.6 billion to spend during this Covid-19 pandemic. All this required zero-cutting of cost and just effective spending to drive the economy.

Unfortunately, the country is plagued with corruption by the same cluster that Wan Saiful’s party put into power after the rakyat had worked so hard to push them out in the 14th general election.

Prudent spending will ensure our next generation will not have to suffer like us today. A person worries about putting meals on the table today. A country worries about the livelihood of the next generations.

Meanwhile, an election is around the corner, so do what you do best, Wan Saiful. The rakyat can see through the lies as we have been suffering the consequences of a failed government that only knows how to dish out cash but not manage the economy.

Lovemalaysia2: What a load of misinformation from Wan Saiful. The people complaining of cuts were those drip-fed by leakages of taxpayers’ money.

The whole distortion of the property market is government-controlled as in ‘socialist’ countries, as is the central government price-fixing of retail products, free hospital care and schools.

Care to do away with any of those to ensure there are no such policies?

Dizzer: Even when he was at the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas), Wan Saiful was prodigiously right-wing. He stood for elections as a hard-right Tory when he was in the UK (Limbury council seat) and joined PAS when he finally returned.

Like a lot of the smarter, more sophisticated Malays, he decided to get into the business of race politics because it was the easiest and quickest way to build influence and wealth.

To be charitable, I suppose, they justified it by arguing to themselves that a racist system could only be reformed from within (and there is a strong argument for that) but once a man has power, he gets swept away by the uncontrollable currents of a system that is deeply corrupted.

To suggest that social democrats are even remotely linked to the hard left, let alone communism, is disingenuous at best and dog-whistle politics for the uneducated masses at worst.

OCT: Wan Saiful thinks money grows on trees. He thinks that Malaysia can keep on borrowing but does not need to repay. He doesn't even know his children and grandchildren are going to pay through their lifetime.

Yes, Malaysia has lots of money and resources, but all these were pilfered by government leaders. Wan Saiful surely knows who they are. Yet he dares not ask them to repay and has no guts to name them. The gravy train is too difficult for him to derail.

Malaysia has so many five-year master plans but none of them benefited the rakyat except the VVIPs. All politicians within the governing parties are super-rich. No country can keep up paying without returns.

Investors are not coming. Corruption is high and mighty. Skilled workers are migrating. Multinational companies are relocating. The economy has tanked. Non-Malay rights are slowly suppressed. Outflow is more than inflow. Malaysia is running on empty.

A perfect storm for a disaster of major proportion.

MerdekaMerdekaMerdeka: Wan Saiful, Harapan may have been stashing away, cutting, reducing or whatever. But all those monies still remained in the coffers, it was still the rakyat’s monies.

Unlike Muhyiddin Yassin’s Bersatu Malay-first, all-Malay government with a bloated cabinet, preposterous budgets and an all-time high national debt with many new Malay bumiputera multi-millionaires created almost overnight. And the already multi-millionaire Malay bumiputera were enriched further.

So yes, Wan Saiful must be missing the gravy train.

Amadeus: Well said, @MerdekaMerdekaMerdeka. It’s strange how Penang has been doing well after DAP took over. Always has a surplus in its annual budget.

Heritage buildings are preserved, the city is clean, hardly seen graffiti on walls. Every culture is celebrated there. Churches, temples and mosques are well kept.

The best part is that people speak Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin and even the local dialect Hokkien. That is a plus for tourism, as Penang has a lot of expatriates and tourists.

The state promotes many tourism activities, like jazz festivals and food culture. Old buildings are restored and repurposed into cultural or events venue, for example, the Lee Hin Bus Depot.

If you ask a Penangite whether they are proud of their city, you will definitely get a ‘yes’ and they probably want further development.

What has PN achieved in the last 17 months?

They have mismanaged the country coffers, the taxpayers’ monies. They have a bloated cabinet. Some are given positions because of their support for Muhyiddin.

They mismanaged the pandemic with senseless and confusing standard operating procedures (SOPs). The procurement of vaccines was also slow. The rakyat was being fined or threatened with jail when they flouted the SOPs, but no action was taken when ministers or their families did the same.

Dr Raman Letchumanan: "It is just that when we refer to the ideology they profess, they (Harapan) clearly and openly state that they hold onto the social democratic ideology," Wan Saiful said.

‘Social’ is about the people, the society. ‘Democracy’ is about the rights of people, equality, and freedom of choice and expression.

So why are these two words, social democracy, bad for the rakyat? Should it be replaced by race supremacy, religious bigotry and klepto-corruption?

And pray tell us what is PN's ideology if it doesn't respect these two words? For a supposedly intellectual, have you read our Constitution? So, is the Constitution leftist or communist?

Yes, I know for Bersatu and PAS it is all about how to fleece the society (rakyat) and shower the nation's wealth on themselves. Asking questions is a no-no.

No wonder we have a bloated cabinet, politicians appointed to every plum position, and advisors and envoys who don't have a job description but obscene salary and perks.

It was a race to empty the nation's coffers, and if not enough, to borrow and indebt the nation. Yet, you complain about the RM30 aid to the rakyat.

PN screwed up democracy by imposing emergency rule and sustaining it by lying, even to the extent of betraying the words of our constitutional monarch to call off the emergency.

Now that you have to face the rakyat to account for your misdeeds, you tell them ‘society’ and ‘democracy’ are not good for them.

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