Pakatan now says it won’t abolish GST if it wins GE14

(NST) – Pakatan Harapan will not abolish the Goods and Services Tax (GST) if it comes into power in the 14th General Election.

Instead, PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar said Pakatan will not continue with the current “high” percentage.

“We are mindful of the hardship faced by the people.

“We will not impose such a high percentage and further burden the people,” she said in her speech during a ceramah organised by Penang Parti Pribumi Bumiputera Malaysia (PPBM).

Present was PPBM chairman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

This marks an about turn by the opposition coalition, which had previously stressed that it would remove the GST if it were to take Putrajaya.

Pakatan had even organised an anti-GST rally in KL last April.

As recently as January this year, DAP secretary-general Lim Kit Siang was quoted as saying that the opposition would scrap the GST if it were to assume control of the Federal government.

Opposition leader Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail had in 2015 also proposed that the coalition would propose to abolish the GST in its Alternative Budget for 2016.

Dr Mahathir, at PPBM’s launch early this year, had also declared that should the opposition win the general election, the GST would be abolished gradually and replaced with a sales tax “according to the people’s will.”

The GST is currently fixed at six per cent.

It replaced the Sales and Services Tax (SST) of up to 10 per cent.