BN MPs: Our welfare state better than PAS’s
(TMI) Barisan Nasional (BN) MPs have agreed with the country’s top two leaders that Malaysia is already run as a welfare state, but insisted their version of the concept was superior to PAS’s.
BN’s welfare state, they said, was to empower the poor through granting them opportunities while PAS’s, on the other hand, was more aimed at spoon-feeding the needy for life.
However, the MPs also agreed that in their rush to divert the public’s attention from its original Islamic state struggle to the welfare state, PAS leaders had failed to define the party’s “reinvented” version of the concept.
“It really depends on how PAS and DAP or Pakatan Rakyat (PR) view this welfare state concept. To me, the welfare state has always been BN’s charter,” Umno’s Tangga Batu MP Datuk Idris Harun told The Malaysian Insider in Parliament lobby today.
“To us, welfare is about how we improve on society to form a better future. BN’s position is about turning those who are always on the receiving end (of welfare aid) to becoming those who are now on the giving end… we are creating contributors,” he added.
PAS, he said, was attempting to “compartmentalise the minds of the people” and allowing them to think that they can always be “the hand that takes”.
Padang Rengas MP and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz agreed with his Umno colleague, saying that BN believes in empowering the poor to help them improve their living conditions.
“Yes, there are handouts but there are opportunities to help them as well. And what about our high achieving students from rural families? How do they become doctors or engineers… if not because of the welfare state that we practise? We give them loans to study and so on,” he said.
Read more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/bn-mps-our-welfare-state-better-than-pass/
