KUALA LUMPUR, 14 May 2018:
Following is the transcript of the briefing session by Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad with Bernama and RTM yesterday.
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
I am holding this restricted press conference because when we have an open press conference, too many people will come, more than 100 people, which makes it difficult for me to explain in detail the situation in the country and the formation of the new government.
Firstly, many do not know the set-up of Pakatan Harapan. It was formed by four parties and has a Presidential Council which is considered the highest body in PH, and here, the four parties will discuss the policies for Pakatan Harapan , and this body also feels that because it is difficult to have frequent meetings, a committee of the top leaders was formed.
Here, the top leaders refers to the four presidents of the four parties, chaired by me. The top five intervene when it is difficult to make a decision in the Presidential Council.
When we have to hold urgent meetings and then report to the Presidential Council and when we make decisions, the four parties will be represented by the presidents and chaired by me.
As you know, I am chairman of Pakatan Harapan and the four presidents come from four parties, and decisions are made by the four presidents and this chairman.
We do this sometimes to expedite decisions, there are no instances where only the president or chairman makes a decision. All decisions are made by these five people who represent their parties.
It is through this body that we state the stand of each party, but in the Presidential Council, these five people need the endorsement of the Presidential Council, so we will report to the Presidential Council to get its endorsement.
This was how we did it when we set up a body or which I call the core ministers, namely me as Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as deputy, from Parti Keadilan Rakyat, and three more presidents, from DAP Lim Guan Eng DAP, Mohamad Sabu (Amanah) and Muhyiddin Yassin (Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia)
All five people know what was decided and it is their responsibility to report to their parties, if not we will confirm the decisions in the Presidential Council.
The Presidential Council is considered the highest council. We call it the top leadership council of Pakatan Harapan. All decisions are made this way, we do not sideline any party because we will not make a decision if one or two parties do not agree.
To make a decision, we uphold the concept of majority rule because we do not always achieve a consensus. So with majority rule, we can make better and faster decisions. As of now, that is the set-up of Pakatan Harapan.
Right now, we need to form a Cabinet as soon as possible.It takes time to form a full Cabinet as each party must refer to their own parties to submit names for the positions.
I have announced what we decided earlier but we will set up a small Cabinet which comprises only 10 people.
I have named three people and we want seven more to make it 10. This will be done as soon as possible with each party giving three names from one party and stating the ministry of their choice.
Of course there will be some overlapping of each party’s needs or wants, that will be determined by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister will look at the candidates nominated by the component parties and will make a decision on who will head which ministry.
If necessary, the Prime Minister will call the leaders of the four parties to get further information on their main choice. And if not, why a candidate is selected for a ministry.
I hope within this week we can form the Cabinet of 10 people. The cabinet will move as a legitimate cabinet and, meanwhile we will select more ministers, up to 25.
In this cabinet of 10, distribution will not be according to each party’s percentage. Some parties have more people’s representatives, some parties have less but we do not go by proportion. But if we find that a party is not getting their proportion, they will be given more when we fill all 24 posts in the proposed cabinet.
We said that we will have 25 ministers in the cabinet, but there is also room for collaborations with parties in Sabah and Sarawak, they will nominate their candidates for the cabinet.
So at that point, the number of Cabinet may be more than now, but our objective is not to be more than 30. We will make government decisions with the prime minister guided by decisions made in the cabinet.
In our Cabinet, we will apply majority rule because if it is through consensus, we may not make any decisions at all. That is how we started our rule because this is a new Cabinet which has never been done except by Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1957 when he formed a small Cabinet of less than 10, and there were three British officers.
But later, more ministries were added until it became big, but the previous regime made it too big, reaching 35.
If possible, we do not want it to be too big. We will also appoint deputy ministers and we will decide the number and which ministries.
As far as possible, we will ensure that in each ministry, if the minister is from one party, the deputy is from another. This is the initial set-up of the new Malaysian government.
Business-friendly
I am also aware of the uneasiness of the people about the policies of this government. We will try to explain these policies, that we are business-friendly, and we want more open participation, but there are certain things which I want to clarify here, that is we will have an anti-corruption movement in the government which means we do not want ministers involved in corruption.
Firstly, we collected a lot of money to finance the election. Many people donated. Now that we have won, we cannot accept any more financial donations unless the Cabinet is aware of it and permits it.
Sometimes, there are people who want to give gifts, but these gifts must be limited to food or flowers, but never valuable items. We want to make sure that from the beginning, there are no corrupt elements in the government.
We are aware that in the previous regime, many people were unjustly pressured. For instance, many people had to pay more taxes than that determined by our laws. We want to know who were forced, how much they had to pay and we will try to return the money that was illegally collected.
We want to know from they themselves if they had paid the full tax and they were approached by the Internal Revenue Board and forced to pay, and if they did not pay, they were threatened with being blacklisted, not permitted to leave the country, and sometimes their passports were taken away, or raids conducted, account books seized and their businesses disrupted.
We do not want to disrupt businesses and we want to reduce the laws related to business activities, there are too many prohibitions which affect the setting-up and running of companies. These will be studied by a group of eminent people so that we can cut down the process of conducting a business.
We will also make sure that any action which can be described as corruption is investigated and action taken if there is evidence that there was corruption whether among politicians, administrators and others.
Action will be taken not only against those who accept (bribes) but the givers will also be investigated and if found guilty, they will face the law. There is no revenge in this, we just want to clean up the government which has not been clean for several years to the point that the people do not trust members of the government.
Rule of law
We will ensure all government work are done according to regulations and the law. This is important because we have to run the country through the rule of law. We have to abide by the law and we will take action on anyone high or low, everyone is subject to the law.
We feel that there were limitations to disseminating news. Some newspapers are pro that and pro this, but we will not control them for as long as their reports have a hansard. Any effort to instigate the people to riot or create tension and such will not be allowed.
But if they report, even though the government does not like to hear it, that is freedom. There will not be legal action, fake news will be given a clear definition so that the public and news organisations can understand what is fake news and what is not.
If they report legitimate news, there will not be any action, but if they engage in fake news especially intended to create disorder in the country, so even though we uphold freedom of the press and expression, there are limits. If we intentionally create chaos in the country, there will be legal action to face.
On the economy, we do not want to see too many laws which curb the freedom to do business. We want all parties to conduct their businesses freely and easily. We welcome investment whether domestic or foreign direct investment.
This Foreign Direct Investment is restricted to bringing in capital and technology into the country , setting up factories, producing goods for the locals or export markets. We see the people of Malaysia are good in bringing about development, we will build our own cities and other needs of the people, and we will ensure that these are open to local companies.
In the case of infrastructure for large projects, only if we do not have the expertise will we allow foreign participation. Everything will go through an open-tender system. If through the open tender, the choice that is made looks peculiar, the government will investigate through appointed officers assigned to the investigation.
We also want to study the performance of the domestic economy and we will instruct that the country’s economy is properly studied so we know how much debt we have to bear and where all the government’s money went or was it due to improper activities such as forcing entrepreneurs to give free shares to certain parties.
All these will be given attention by the new government and we will repeal several laws through the existing system, to repeal we may have to go to Parliament and will repeal these law and new laws will be legislated by Parliament.
So far, that is what we will do. I believe the people do not have to be nervous and doubt the intentions of the government. Our intention is to clean up our country and we will try to lessen the economic problems that have plagued our nation.