KUALA LUMPUR, April 16 — Aid distributed by Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali in his constituency yesterday was approved before the state assembly was dissolved, said the caretaker mentri besar’s office today.
Azmin’s strategic communications director, Yin Shao Loong, was responding to the Malaysiakini news portal that reported the former as handing out over RM2 million in “goodies” that included “cash, laptops and iPads”.
“All applications for this aid were made prior to the dissolution of Parliament and do not represent ad hoc spending specially tailored for the election season. The allegation of ‘goodies’ in the headline is thus misleading,” he said.
“Constituency disbursements are a regular part of a public representative’s duties to their constituents and Datuk Seri Azmin reports such events openly on his social media accounts. His last such event was on 16 December 2017,” Yin added.
He also disputed the reported value and a form of the handouts, insisting that Azmin gave out RM1 million instead of RM2 million and in cheques rather than cash.
Yin added that cheques must be used for such official programmes as these would have been processed properly.
“To suggest that ‘cash’ was handed out gives the impression that what occurred was an event of a very base political calibre, which is far from the truth,” he added.
Yin also said the total aid was RM967,150 across four events Azmin held across Gombak and Bukit Antarabangsa, as opposed to the reported amount of RM2.24 million.
