Monday, December 23, 2013

Pakatan Rakyat wants Parliament sitting on rising prices, education


Published: Friday December 20, 2013 MYT 10:47:00 PM 
Updated: Friday December 20, 2013 MYT 10:52:45 PM

KUALA LUMPUR: Pakatan Rakyat will request for a special Parliament sitting to discuss the current economic and education situation in the country.

Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said the people deserved an explanation and the best way would be to allow Parliament to discuss the issues.

Touching on a World Bank report, Anwar said its financial report stated that the government sold assets worth RM1.4bil.

"To this point there has been no explanation on what are the assets that were sold.

"The only thing made clear is that it was to apparently reduce the nation's deficit, considering the economic state of the nation," he said at a press conference at the launch of the Anti-GST rally with PR leaders Datuk Seri Hadi Awang and Lim Kit Siang at Kelab Sultan Sulaiman here.

Anwar said there was a need to look into the hike in prices, from the proposed toll to school bus fares.
"These issues need to be argued out by the MPs as it concerns the people," he said.

Lim said the education standard in the country was not up to the international benchmark.

"Recently the Prime Minister congratulated 30,988 students for scoring straight A's in the PMR examinations.

"This should actually mean that our nation is to produce 30,000 outstanding students every year. However, the PISA 2012 reports stated that only 1.3 percent of the students in Malaysia actually achieved a high score," he said.

PKR strategic director Rafizi Ramli said PR will organise anti-GST gatherings in every state.

"There will be parallel programmes around the country to educate the public on GST and the technical aspects of it. Only when people understand will there be more resistance," Rafizi said.

The party will also be training more of its MPs and state assemblymen to speak on the topic.

Despite the presence of PR's top leaders, the night's programme failed to attract a big crowd.

"This is just the soft launch. Only today did we decide to go to each state," said DAP PJ Utara MP Tony Pua.

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