SHAH ALAM - The Housing and Local Government minister Nga Kor Ming needs to acknowledge the mistakes made by Pakatan Harapan (PH) in making many promises that were not fulfilled.
Umno Supreme Council member Datuk Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi said that the current government has to admit that the idea of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and targeted subsidies introduced by former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak was beneficial for the country.
He said there was nothing wrong if the current government adopts a humble approach and corrects its mistakes.
"Nga said that the targeted subsidies announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim are to correct past mistakes. That's correct. PH has indeed made many mistakes and made empty promises.
"It is not wrong for the government to humble themselves to correct past mistakes. If they know it was a mistake, bring back the GST,” he said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
Previously, Nga described Anwar as brave for implementing targeted diesel subsidy reforms.
He said that although the previous government was aware of leakages in the subsidy distribution, no leader wanted to correct the mistakes, resulting in increasingly severe leakages.
Elaborating further, Puad said that after winning the 14th General Election (GE14), PH rejected the idea and instead replaced it with the sales and services tax (SST).
He noted that now the previous government's idea has been adopted by PH and has received praise, even though it was previously opposed by many.
"But PH cancelled that decision when they won GE14. Now it's like eating their own words,” he said.