Sin Chew Daily

The passing of Budget 2021 in Dewan Rakyat has revealed the relative strengths of the Perikatan Nasional government led by Muhyiddin Yassin against Pakatan Harapan leader Anwar Ibrahim.

The 111 vs 108 result of bloc voting for the third reading of Budget 2021 has provided Muhyiddin stable power for the time being. The government will be able to carry out its proposed policies next year, thus resolving the crisis of facing the dilemma if the Budget is defeated.

The government will receive RM236.9 billion in revenues next year, but the proposed Budget is RM322.5 billion with a deficit of RM85.6 billion or about 6% of the country's GDP. The proposed expansionary budget is also the biggest in the country's history.

A total of RM236.5 billion has been set aside as operating expenses, accounting for 73.3% of the budget to pay for salaries of civil servants, foreign debts and interests, while only RM69 billion or 21.4% will be allocated for development expenditures.

This is not a healthy phenomenon. The long-standing issue of excess civil workforce will continue to be a financial burden for the country if it remains unresolved.

Budget 2021 encompasses 27 ministries on three integral goals: the rakyat's well-being, business continuity and economic resilience. But Pakatan sees the Budget as not helping the people, not adequately countering COVID-19 and not helping the economic recovery. Hence, the opposition decided to defeat the Budget at its third reading, but it still survived the parliamentary vote.

Deputy finance minister Abdul Rahim Bakri explained in Dewan Rakyat that the government had allocated RM15 billion in nine months under wage subsidy program which would benefit 2.7 million workers and 330,000 employers. The measure has effectively helped workers and companies affected by the coronavirus.

The government has also introduced various other measures such as cash aid, caring aid, subsidies for SMEs and EPF withdrawal scheme amounting to billions of ringgit as immediate aid to assist millions of affected households.

These are the measures implemented throughout 2020. For next year, the government will still need to curb the spread of COVID-19, revive the economy and cap the unemployment rate, an uphill task at this moment.

On November 6, finance minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz tabled the Budget 2021 bill for the first reading. Due to a last-minute instruction from Anwar, only 13 MPs requested for bloc voting when the bill was up for second reading on November 26. As bloc voting requires a request made by a minimum of 15 MPs, the Budget was approved with a voice vote at the second reading.

Debates on Budget 2021 at committee stage in Dewan Rakyat were held from November 30 to December 14, when the proposed budgets for individual ministries were passed in bloc voting. The budget allocation for International Trade and Industry Ministry for next year was approved with the slimmest margin of 110 to 104, and this shows that the number of seats controlled by the opposition was still not enough to overturn the Muhyiddin-led government.

Although Budget 2021 has been passed, this does not mean that the political fights have ended here. Muhyiddin has said general elections would be called once the COVID-19 pandemic is over, in a bid to end the fights.

However, if the election results are unable to seal a landslide victory for either side, the elected representatives will still resort to crossing over. One can't help but still worrry about the future of this country.