KUCHING, Jan 7 — Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng should have followed protocol when asking Sarawak to pay back the RM2.5 billion owed to the federal government instead of issuing a media statement, an Opposition party president in the Borneo state said.
State Reform Party president Lina Soo said the protocol for Lim would have been for him to approach his Sarawak counterpart to settle the debt instead of using the public domain yesterday, which she described as “overkill”.
“This is an overkill as the Sarawak Tourism, Arts Culture, Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Karim Rahman Hamzah was merely asking for Sarawak’s share of the tourism tax revenue as was promised by the federal government,” Soo said.
She lashed out at Lim, saying his actions showed the arrogance of federal ministers.
She added that if not for the oil and gas revenues of Sarawak and Sabah expropriated, peninsular Malaysia would never have the superhighways, transportation and skyscrapers built on the scale seen today.
Soo also reminded Lim of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition’s election pledge of 20 per cent oil royalty and 50 per cent tax proceeds to be returned to Sarawak, saying the state has yet to see the money.
“The people of Sarawak have been duped by false promises,” she said.
She called on Lim to apologise to Sarawakians for breaking PH’s election promises after being voted into power.
She also said the Sarawak government should ask the federal government to repatriate to it the billions that Petronas had allegedly exploited and siphoned off from Sarawak oil and gas under the Petroleum Development Act 1974.
Yesterday, Lim reminded Sarawak not to make defamatory remarks and that it still owed RM2.5 billion as at November 30 last year and was RM50 million in arrears, in response to state minister Karim’s call for Sarawak’s share of RM2.7 million in tourism tax revenue.
Lim also clarified that Putrajaya has the prerogative on the tourism tax revenue with the states as it was federal income, but would do so as it had announced the 50 per cent share during Budget 2019.
He said payment would be made to all states fairly within the first quarter of this year.
