PERIKATAN Nasional is still undecided on the government’s provisional offer of constituency allocations for opposition MPs.
This is after Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof’s announcement this morning that the unity government has agreed in principle to consider extending allocations to elected representatives from the opposition.
The unity government chief whip said a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) will be drawn up and extended to the opposition for further discussions.
“PN will make a decision after thoroughly examining the terms of the draft MoU which the government is preparing,” said opposition leader Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin in a brief statement on the matter.
Meanwhile, PN chairman Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said it remains to be seen whether PN and the unity government can reach an agreement.
“(The government has only) agreed to consider (providing allocations). It has not been agreed on yet. We don’t even know the contents of the MOU,” he told FMT.
Earlier this month, the news portal reported that Hamzah, who is also the PN secretary-general, had confirmed receiving a draft agreement on constituency funds for opposition MPs from a representative of a “high-ranking individual”, although he had declined to reveal the name of the individual.
On Saturday, Fadillah, who has been tasked with negotiating with the opposition on its demands for constituency funds, said the opposition had said that any conditions for granting allocations would be left to the government to determine.
Hamzah also previously pushed the government to present any proposed offer in “black and white”, saying the government under Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob had used this same approach when signing an MOU with Pakatan Harapan in September 2021, during which an equal allocation of funds for MPs was among the items agreed upon. – April 18, 2024
Main pic credit: Utusan Malaysia
