Instead of trying to “twist facts” and inciting misdirected anger on something so important as education, I strongly believe we must take out the emotions from the issue and allow the public to purely look at the data and facts to better understand the issue.
Instead of misleading the public and inciting misdirected anger on a statement by then Minister of Finance who asked the State Government to honour the payment of the agreed “contra-loan”, we let the facts speak for itself.
First and foremost, the statement by then Minister of Finance then was referring on the agreement between PH Federal Government and State Government in February 2019 which was agreed upon after a courtesy call between the then Minister of Education Maszlee Malik and Chief Minister Abang Johari.
The agreement was that the State Government will offer RM 1 billion as contra payment to what the State owes the Federal Government first, which as of December 2018, was about RM 2.5 billion.
In return, all of this RM 1 billion will be allocated fully back to Sarawak for the repairs of the dilapitated school. Such move is unprecedented and never done before nor has it been done ever since even when GPS are part of government.
In normal practice, once any State pays back its debts, it will be put into Federal Government Consolidated Fund which the Federal Government can be used for any other purposes all around the country.
All Federal government loans paid by the Sarawak government now were not repaid back in the form of direct grants as done by the PH government.
But in this case an exception was made for Sarawak to show the PH seriousness to address the long-term issue of dilapitated schools in Sarawak.
Fact of the matter the Prime Minister at that time had strong reservations as he was concern it will set a precedent for other states.
However due to the seriousness of matter and the political will from the Ministry of Finance at that time, this agreement was agreed upon in cabinet.
Such agreement was in place due to the lack of funds by the Federal Government due to debts and commitments racked up due to mismanagement of the previous BN government.
For example, RM1.57 billion alone was needed to pay only for interest payments for 1MDB debts.
So again, once you remove the emotion out of the issue, nothing can change the fact that this agreement was beneficial to Sarawak and agreed upon by the State Government.
So it is irresponsible that this issue is somehow used as an attempt to paint a misleading picture of the intention of the then PH Government.
If GPS leaders want to question, they should instead question themselves on how they allowed such rot and neglect to our schools to happen all these years at the expense of our students and even teachers, rather than inciting misdirected anger at PH and putting unrealistic expectations on us to resolve years of neglect in first few years we are in power.