Najib: I never asked the people to 'sacrifice' during my time

In his nine years of running the country, never once has he asked the people to 'sacrifice' anything, and the economy was booming, claimed Najib Abdul Razak.

In a Facebook post, the former prime minister said his administration also increased assistance to the rakyat, and only now, after Pakatan Harapan had taken over the federal government, are the rakyat being asked to 'sacrifice'.

"The Harapan government must accept the fact that it is their own policies and steps which has derailed the economy, and in the end, cause the rakyat to pay the price.

"Before, (during BN's governance) we had the National Transformation Programme, which was orderly, and effective.

"Now we have a finance minister who is afraid his reputation is under threat, and a government which asks the people to sacrifice, for its own regressive moves," Najib wrote.

The Pekan MP was responding to a remark by Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, in an interview with Malaysiakini, that he is likely to end up as the most unpopular finance minister, because he has no 'goodies' to give out in the upcoming Budget 2019.

Thus, Lim said, the government is looking for sacrifices from Malaysians, to help reduce the RM1 trillion national debt, so that Malaysia can get back on track fiscally within three years.

Deficit is Harapan's own doing

Najib, who is also the former finance minister, claimed that the economic deficit today is caused by Harapan, and not the previous BN government.

"The actual problem of the government today is due to steps taken after the 14th general election, such as giving a three-month tax break, without the goods and services tax (GST), and sales and service tax (SST), replacing the GST with SST, reintroducing bulk subsidy and cancelling various projects.

"These caused the government to lose at least RM40 billion a year, excluding the GST input which needs to be repaid after the tax was suddenly zero-rated.

"Cancelling projects will also slow down the economic development. Coupled with the government's move to cut down assistance to the people, including the 1Malaysia People's Aid (BR1M), this may plunge the economy further down - possibly towards a recession," claimed Najib.

The government, however, would not admit this, and will continue to pin the blame on him, as well as the old government, he added.

"I'm sure that the Budget 2019 will be a deficit budget. This means the country's debt will increase, and not go down.

"Guan Eng has already given such a picture since last week, as he has announced that the government will release more government bonds. Releasing bonds means borrowing money, and that is debt." - Mkini