The Pakatan Harapan government has fulfilled 60 per cent of the electoral pledges that it made during the last general elections in Malaysia.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng says with this achievement, the people should give the government time to resolve the country’s financial problems and stabilise the economy.
“We must remember that the 1MDB led to the collapse of the previous government… we need time and will not away run from our problems, but we will address the financial difficulties and solve them,” he said at the opening of the 2019 Kuala Lumpur Federal Territories DAP Convention today (Monday).
The population of Malaysia puts a lot of emphasis on the promises made by the Pakatan in the run-up to the elections that brought the Najib Razak regime down.
The local social media scene is abuzz with daily attacks against Pakatan ministers and the government in general for the perceived failure to fulfil the electoral pledges.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was the first to state the PH manifesto was a hasty manifesto, and the government cannot fulfil all the promises.
This got the criticism against his government to reach its peak, with many saying he took the people for a ride.
But Lim Guan Eng said reforms take time.
“After 60 years of rule by the previous government its impossible to make changes in three or four years. We need to reassure the people that we have not forgotten the promises we’ve made to them,” he says.
In October, PKR president Anwar Ibrahim said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad will not “trivialise” the PH manifesto and is implementing what he can.
He made the comments after Dr Mahathir said the manifesto was a hasty one, and the opposition parties put anything in it to win votes.
“He has said some parts of the manifesto can be implemented and some have to be put on hold,” Anwar said.
Mahathir had said PH did not expect to win the May 9 polls and had made promises in its manifesto which were difficult to deliver.
“We thought we were going to lose. We put in tough things in the manifesto so that if we lose, the (BN) government would be in a quandary (after winning the polls).
“But now, we are the government. We are victims of our own manifesto,” he was quoted as saying.-/TISG