By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, Oct 3: Santubong MP Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar says the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government now needs the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to survive.
“Within 500 days as the government, they (PH government) have reduced the value of 11 sovereign funds to two thirds of their values in 2017.
“They also took RM82 billion from Petronas and made RM20 billion from the proceeds of sale of assets and yet the national debt increased from RM686 billion to RM712 billion,” according to Wan Junaidi in a press statement.
He also stated the economy has been plummeting and investors have been avoiding Malaysia, the ringgit is at all time low as compare to USD which is now nearly RM4.18, and the KLSE lost more than 30 points from more than 1,900 in 2017 to 1,560 today.
“The rakyat should hold them responsible for this disaster. Now, after losing the GST (sic) to a tune of RM23 billion in 2018 and going to lose another RM23 billion in 2019, they have less and less available assets to sell and Petronas is going to dry up.
“That is why they are thinking of reintroducing the GST. At least they can get RM23 billion later,” claimed Wan Junaidi, adding that the reason for PH wanting to take over Sarawak in the coming Sarawak election was because PH is eyeing the state’s rich resources for their disposal.
He disclosed the former Barisan Nasional (BN) government had studied and come to a conclusion that GST was a much better and efficient tax system than any other system known presently while the Sales and Services Tax (SST) tended to be abused, leading to tax evasion.
“After a long study and deliberation, the BN administration then introduced the GST.”
Wan Junaidi also claimed GST has been used by PH to introduce a new narrative, that it increased the cost of goods and burdened the people, particularly the B40 while SST gives a positive impact where the “rakyat would be saved”.
“This catchy narrative captivated the people’s imagination and the people believed in it. All the PH leaders then began the parroting of the narrative. The narrative was echoed in every nook and corners of the country, continuously and ceaselessly; poor Malaysians believed them.”
Wan Junaidi observed that after PH won the general elections with the narrative, the cost of goods did not go down. Instead, the government is now losing RM23 billion each year. Due to less income, the federal government had to lift people-oriented subsidies and safety nets such as fishermen’s assistance programmes while the B40 suffered even worse.
According to him, following the failure to improve the general welfare and livelihood of the people, the PH government started to make accusations such as BN stealing RM19 billion of GST refunds.
“When the government introduced the GST in 2017, the bookkeeping, the accounting and record systems were changed. All the business people of all levels, from bulk sellers to retailers changed their systems. Series of briefing and training were made. Costs were involved.
“After PH took over in 2018 they introduced the SST and all those GST accounting and bookkeeping systems had to be abandoned. Now if GST is re-introduced, they (the businessmen) have to go through the process again because of PH’s lack of foresight.”
To Wan Junaidi, PH has reached the stage where it could no longer explained itself and thus is forced to make another U-turn, by considering replacing SST with GST.
It was reported earlier today that Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the government was wiling to study calls to re-introduce GST if this is what the people wanted.
“If people believe it is better, we will study it.
“We will study if it (GST) is better than SST,” Dr Mahathir was reported saying after launching the Security and Public Order Policy today.
Removing GST was one of PH’s manifesto and signature campaign promises during 14th General Election (GE14). It was abolished by PH on June 2018, after taking over the federal government on May 9, 2018.
On Sept 1, 2018, the PH-led government introduced SST to replace GST. — DayakDaily
