By Daniel John Jambun
The way I look at it, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, has handled the issue of increased oil royalty very poorly, judging from the way he made his remarks in Putatan on Thursday.
He simply said that (1) The demand for increased royalty is just an opposition gimmick, (2) It is another empty promise of the opposition, (3) 20% or even 50% royalty doesn’t make economic sense because at this level of royalty, allocations to Sabah would have to be cut, (4) “Even their promises in the last election haven’t been fulfilled,” (5) The opposition is also promising to reduce petrol prices. These are very old and boring rehashed answers which are easy to rebut: The demand for increased oil royalty is not a gimmick but something which will definitely be implemented when BN loses Putrajaya, so it won’t be an empty promise when we win the election, and it makes a lot of economic sense for Sabah, Sarawak and Terengganu because with that level of royalty we won’t even need anymore federal allocation. The allocations we are getting today are in fact just crumbs compared to the huge amount we are giving to the Federal Government every year, and that is on top of the billions of annual taxes collected from Sabah. We haven’t fulfilled our promises in the last election because we didn’t take over Putrajaya yet. How does Najib think we can implement something which we promised “if the people vote BN out”? In fact it is the BN which failed to fulfil a lot of promises and created a lot of mess since coming to power so long ago. I have listed these in my long list of scandals and wasteful abuses of the people’s money – by the hundreds of billions – published in online portals under the title “Najib should clarify financial scandals.” I am still waiting for a reply.
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