KUCHING, May 21: State Democratic Action Party (DAP) leader Abdul Aziz Isa appeals to the people to give Pakatan Harapan (PH) ample time to fulfil its election pledges as “it is not easy to clean up the mess left by Barisan National (BN) that had been in the government for 61 years”.
The special assistant to state PH chairman Chong Chieng Jen said instead of overtaxing the people, the government would focus on implementing policies such as prevention of leakages and raising income of the people to generate revenue.
“We are of the view that overtaxing the rakyat, especially the B40 group at 6 per cent, could have been an avoidable tragedy, should we not have had to recoup our losses from 1MDB.
“Thus, rather than focusing on GST (Goods and Services Tax), what we urgently need to do now is to get rid of the leakages and raise income levels so we have at least half of the population paying income taxes,” said Abdul Aziz in a press statement yesterday.
He applauded Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s decision to reduce GST from six to zero per cent from June 1.
“This announcement coming from the Prime Minister shows that PH is consistent on its stance on the GST by committing to impose zero per cent GST once the coalition came to power.
“In less than 100 days, the Pakatan Harapan-led federal government has fulfilled one of its 10 pledges as stated in our election manifesto,” said Abdul Aziz.
He said the “zero per cent” move means that the GST will be effectively abolished. But the Malaysian Parliament would need to repeal the GST Act 2014 before the consumption tax can be totally removed.
He pointed out that Dr Mahathir had been Malaysian Prime Minister for 22 years from 1981 to 2003 and during his administration, he ran the country successfully without GST. Even so, he had successfully transformed Malaysia from an agricultural country into industrial country, and his proven track record had made Malaysia known as one of the ‘tiger economies’ of Southeast Asia.
“We believe that Prime Minister Tun Mahathir knows how to manage the economy without the tax. He’s done it before and the people know this,” said Abdul Aziz. — DayakDaily
