Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir urged Malaysians to give the Pakatan Harapan government five years to implement its pledges, before evaluating and judging them at ballot boxes.

He also said the government had difficulties achieving its aims because of the severe damage caused by the Najib Razak administration.

“If you no longer have faith (with the government) you can vote in the GE15, they (the people) determine but we promised a lot and will take five years (to implement the pledges) before we can keep our promise.

“But what happened during the drawing-up of the manifesto, we didn’t get full information and when took over (the government), we find the damage done by the previous government was far more serious than we thought.

“This was what caused us difficulty to achieve out goal (keeping the 14th General Election manifesto pledges),” he said.

Dr Mahathir was commenting at an event on Sunday on The National Worry Index (NWI) survey. The survey revealed many Malaysians were not certain where the country was heading under the PH. 

The survey also showed the people were either unsure or disagreed that the Pakatan Harapan was competitive and the nation was on the right track or that Malaysia’s economy was on a solid foundation.

Dr Mahathir was speaking after officiating the 58th Annual General Meeting of the Malaysian Muslim Welfare Organisation (Perkim), here today.

“We are facing a problem involving the cost of living due to the fact that some quarters had devalued our currency.

“If in the past, one US Dollar gave you RM3.80, its is now RM4.20. Due to this currency value, everything we buy has become costlier as our currency had devalued. This is one reason and the government is discussing this.

“The prices of some goods have also seen a reduction, but the people do not see that,” he said. /TISG