Frozen accounts: GE14 taught Bersatu to work with limited funds - Faizal

 

Bersatu’s experience in dealing with funding constraints in the 14th general election (GE14) will help the party face the upcoming six state polls, said its deputy president Ahmad Faizal Azumu.

This comes after Bersatu’s accounts were frozen to facilitate MACC’s investigations under the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act.

“Bersatu’s accounts have been frozen for over a month and we admit it had an impact on the party, especially in paying our staff’s salaries but right now we can’t do anything.

“It has made it difficult for us to move effectively for the upcoming state polls, but lessons from GE14 have given us a lot of experience in using our existing strengths.

“Imagine, we painted the Bersatu flags ourselves but we managed to win and form the government then,” he was quoted as saying by Utusan today.

“It is not impossible that with the momentum of the rakyat’s support from GE15, InsyaAllah, we can win more seats specifically in Selangor,” he added.

Faizal stressed that Bersatu’s experience from GE14 taught the party many lessons on how to work with what it has, which eventually saw Bersatu winning several states and the federal government from BN back in 2018.

At the time, Bersatu was one of the parties in the Pakatan Harapan coalition which formed the federal government.

However, Bersatu later became one of the main players in the Sheraton Move which saw the downfall of the Harapan government led by former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad after 22 months in power.

In GE15, Bersatu teamed up with PAS and Gerakan in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition and succeeded in wresting the Perlis government from BN.

PN was later embroiled in allegations involving its lavish use of funds in the recent national election.

It was previously reported that Bersatu’s accounts were frozen over allegations that it received contributions from some 10 contractors who obtained various projects when the party was running the government.

According to an MACC source, the contributions were suspected to involve more than RM300 million in total.

Shortly before its accounts were frozen, Bersatu declared its 2020 and 2021 accounts in an attempt to counter the allegations of corruption. - Mkini