Statement on Anwar offering resignation is fake

 

A statement purporting that opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is offering to resign over the debacle during the Budget 2021 vote is fake, according to his aide.

The aide said this after the statement that purportedly came from Anwar was circulated through social media channels and instant messaging services.

In the falsified statement carrying Anwar’s letterhead, Anwar supposedly admitted a mistake has been made and urged Pakatan Harapan to let go of the matter and press ahead.

“Harapan is committed to ensuring that the budget is rejected, thus the time for debate at the committee stage will be fully utilised.

“As a guarantee of my oath, I am hereby prepared to resign from all my political posts if this measure is not realised in seven days,” the fake statement read.

During voting on the Budget 2021 proposal at the Dewan Rakyat yesterday, Anwar had made a last-minute decision to call-off a bid to initiate bloc voting on the bill.

This allowed the proposal to pass policy stage debates through a voice vote instead.

In bloc voting, the vote of each MP would have to be formally tallied and recorded. The process needs the support of at least 15 MPs to be initiated, but only 13 MPs mainly from Pejuang and Amanah stood up to call for bloc voting.

Anwar explained that the controversial decision was because Harapan does not want to be seen as rejecting the initiatives being announced by Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz.

Instead, Harapan will be opposing the budget at the committee stage debates as the Dewan Rakyat goes through each ministry’s budget one-by-one.

He said there is still time to take a “strong stance” against the budget through bloc votes at the committee stage of the debate. - Mkini