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Monday, July 22, 2013

Don't 'sell' your votes for money - Anwar tells Kuala Besut

Don't 'sell' your votes for money - Anwar tells Kuala Besut
KUALA BESUT BY-ELECTION PAS’s uphill battle for Kuala Besut received its much-needed boost last night when Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim finally went on the stump here, sounding a plea to voters not to be enslaved by Barisan Nasional’s (BN) financial carrots.
To the poverty-stricken fishing village that some 18,000 voters call home, the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leader preached his pact’s brand of freedom and empowerment in contrast to BN’s promises of riches and pork barrel politics.
“We cannot be slaves, we must be free in our bodies and our souls,” Anwar told over 1,000 supporters gathered in Kampung Tok Saboh.
“Don’t just because of RM500 we changed ourselves from free men into slaves,” he said, referring to the 1 Malaysia People’s Aid (BR1M) handout.
In the run-up to the recently-concluded May 5 general election, BN had promised that it would increase the government’s BR1M cash handouts from RM500 gradually to RM1,200 for those earning less than RM3,000 a month.
The programme is a one-time handout for Malaysian households earning RM3,000 and below, and the second payout will be made this year under Budget 2013 with an allocation of RM3 billion and is expected to benefit 4.3 million households.
In Kuala Besut, PAS estimated yesterday that a total of around RM377 million has been spent by the ruling coalition since the campaign kicked off 10 days ago in the form of handouts and new projects.
Last week, the Islamist party accused BN of perpetuating “politics of poverty”, claiming that the ruling coalition has keeping Kuala Besut folks poor to keep its hold on the community.
PAS secretary-general Datuk Mustafa Ali explained that there is still unemployment while income has stayed low among the residents, causing them to be very dependent on financial aid from the federal government.
“The poorer the people are, the stronger their support for Umno, that’s what got me baffled,” Anwar said last night to the laughter from the crowd.
He accused the BN government of leaning towards affluent tycoons such as Ananda Krishnan and Tan Sri Kenneth Eswaran, instead of letting the wealth trickle down towards the common folks, especially Bumiputera ones.
On Saturday, BN whizzed into Kuala Besut with more goodies for its folk, announcing three major projects that promised to improve the livelihoods of its nearly 18,000 voters.
Totalling nearly RM300 million, the projects include a river-dredging project to de-silt the estuary of Sungai Besut, a 2km breakwater along the coast, and a RM35 million project to fix the busted Lowvier dam in Pengkalan Nangka here.
Terengganu Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Ahmad Said had also told hundreds of Kuala Besut voters last week that they must support BN in the polls to allow planned development there to continue.
BN’s Tengku Zaihan Che Ku Abdul Rahman is up against a local boy from PAS, Azlan Yusof, for the Terengganu state seat in the July 24 by-election which was called following the death of Dr A. Rahman Mokhtar on June 26 from lung cancer.
- MM

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