Why did Pakatan Harapan not present its Alternative Budget?
Tun Dr Mahathir and Anwar Ibrahim say they will only support Budget 2021 if it is good for the people. Most Malaysians can agree with that. So maybe Mahathir and Anwar can sit down and come out with their “Alternative Budget 2021”, like back in the old days, so that the people can see how bad Budget 2021 is and how clever Pakatan Harapan is at managing Malaysia’s economy.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Back in the days when Malaysia’s opposition had a coalition called Barisan Alternatif (BA) — comprising of PAS, PKR, DAP and PRM — BA would present its Alternative Budget. Basically, this would be the opposition’s counter-proposal or alternative ideas to what the Budget should be.
This was during the time of Budget 2000, Budget 2001, Budget 2002, etc.
Barisan Alternatif or the planners of the Alternative Budget did not know what the government was going to propose. But that did not matter. Barisan Alternatif did not need to see what the government Budget was going to be before coming out with an Alternative Budget.
Don’t like Budget 2021, then show us your “Alternative Budget 2021”
In fact, the idea was for the opposition to come out with an Alternative Budget ahead of the government Budget. Then, in case the government Budget missed certain things or was not as good as the Alternative Budget, they could amend the government Budget to include some of the ideas from the opposition’s budget.
And this did happen. There were some good ideas in the Alternative Budget, which were not in the government Budget, so the government Budget was quickly amended at the eleventh hour to include these ideas from the opposition.
We knew that the government had stolen or plagiarised some of the ideas from the Alternative Budget. But that did not matter. That was the whole reason why the Alternative Budget was presented ahead of the government Budget. And it was presented in Parliament House in one of the meeting rooms during a press conference.
The objective of the Alternative Budget was not to show how clever the opposition is or how stupid the government is. It is to help the government see the alternative view or the other side of the coin. So, we wanted the government to steal some of the ideas from the opposition.
Let’s see what Pakatan Harapan’s “Alternative Budget 2021” is going to look like
Pakatan Harapan has a number of ex-Finance Ministers — Tun Daim Zainuddin, Anwar Ibrahim, Lim Guan Eng, etc. So why did they not come out with an Alternative Budget like back in 1999, 2000, 2001 and so on? They could have presented their Alternative Budget on Monday, ahead of the government Budget or Budget 2021 on Friday. Then Malaysians can see how clever Pakatan Harapan is and now better the Alternative Budget is compared to the government’s Budget 2021.
But they did not do that or do what they had done 20 years or so ago. Pakatan Harapan just waited for Budget 2021 to be tabled so that they could attack it. If Pakatan Harapan presents its Alternative Budget, and if the “Alternative Budget 2021” is almost similar to or is not that far off from Budget 2021, then they cannot attack it.
Pakatan Harapan had been talking about Budget 2021 for some time. Everyone knew they were going to use the Budget as a backdoor no-confidence motion to bring down Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and the Perikatan Nasional government. Hence, they could not afford for Budget 2021 to be perfect, they needed it to be flawed, or else there would be no excuse to reject it.
Tun Dr Mahathir and Anwar Ibrahim say they will only support Budget 2021 if it is good for the people. Most Malaysians can agree with that. So maybe Mahathir and Anwar can sit down and come out with their “Alternative Budget 2021”, like back in the old days, so that the people can see how bad Budget 2021 is and how clever Pakatan Harapan is at managing Malaysia’s economy.
