'Gov't is a kitchen cabinet full of cockroaches and rats'

Malaysia is governed not by a cabinet of ministers, but a kitchen cabinet of cockroaches and rats, said a PAS lawmaker.

Pokok Sena MP Mahfuz Omar said this while lashing out at the government's decision to revise Budget 2016, which he said was a result of incompetency.

"Malaysia has a kitchen cabinet filled with cockroaches and rats who have bitten into the hand soap," Mahfuz said in a statement today.

Last Friday, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak announced that Budget 2016 would be “recalibrated”. He cited, among others, the prolonged slump in oil prices.

Mahfuz, however, said oil prices have been on the downtrend since 2014, and the government, which has two finance ministers and two deputy ministers, should have foreseen that it would continue to drop in 2016.

"Does Malaysia only have finance ministers who draw salaries while doing nothing? [...] If the government had from the start read the downtrend in oil prices, there would have been no need to revise Budget 2016," he said.

The former PAS vice-president added that this failing to calculate based on the downtrend showed Malaysia was weak in crafting a good budget. -Mkini