Cabinet committee to sift through, combine govt party manifestoes

When a government is formed after an election, there are usually high expectations for them to fulfil its election manifesto.

But with the government of the day consisting of coalitions and parties that each had separate manifestos, there is a lack of clarity on which campaign promises to follow.

To solve this, Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli (above) said the cabinet has tasked Chief Secretary to the Government Mohd Zuki Ali with forming a government committee to sift through the manifestoes and pick which agendas to adopt.

"We are a coalition of parties with different backgrounds, different policies, each actually had our own manifesto going into GE15.

"But now that we're in government, for us to quickly combine all the manifesto, there is a time constraint.

"At the cabinet level, there is already a committee that is working to pick and choose and combine all the specific programmes from each of the coalition manifestoes," he told reporters after the Dewan Rakyat session concluded today.

Rafizi stressed, however, that any decisions are bound by a set of principles as outlined under Section 2 of the memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the government parties.

The MOA, among others, vows to eradicate poverty regardless of race, give fair economic chances to the poor regardless of background, as well as safeguard freedoms to assembly and free speech and enhance the separation of powers between the three branches of government.

Rafizi was asked to comment on why the MOA did not outline specific reforms as compared to the memorandum of understanding between Pakatan Harapan and the Ismail Sabri Yaakob administration.

Asked whether there would be equal funding for all MPs, Rafizi said this is a question that has to be asked to the Finance Ministry, which is headed by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. - Mkini