THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2013
A Kadir Jasin
LET us hear some intelligent and productive debates when the new Parliament sits!
We cannot expect anything less since the Dewan Rakyat is now more balanced than ever – 133 Barisan Nasional vs 89 Pakatan Rakyat.
Let them begin by debating the good and bad of a very important fiscal measure the government has been proposing for decades, i.e the Goods and Services Tax (GST) (Read Here).
Let us see who is telling the truth. The government repeatedly argues that GST is the fairest and most equitable form of consumption tax and will not burden consumers. (Read Here).
But the Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, said every Malaysian would be burdened by an extra RM1,000 a year should the government impose a seven-percent GST rate (Read Here).
So let them debate intelligently in the Parliament the good and evil of GST. Let them argue with facts and figures whether we should proceed with it, when and at what rate.
Let’s hear the Finance Minister debunking in the House the allegation by the Penang CM that the GST “would make it easy for the federal government to hand out 1Malaysia People's Aid (BR1M) of RM1,200 as promised in the BN’s election manifesto because the government stands to earn an extra RM5,000 from every household by implementing GST.”
Lim could have a point because the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Idris Jala, recently hinted that the government could earn up to RM27 billion in extra revenue by imposing a seven-percent GST rate.
And the BN members may want to take note of Lim’s warning when he said: “Pakatan will fight against this suggestion (seven percent GST) in Parliament by reminding BN that it only has 47 percent of the popular vote, and that it doesn’t have the right to impose GST on the majority of people.”
Let us too debate.
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