KUALA LUMPUR, June 2 — DAP Socialist Youth leader Howard Lee today said that if the Perikatan Nasional administration can suspend Parliament via an Emergency, it should also be able to find a way to provide a blanket loan moratorium for Malaysians during the latest movement control order (MCO).
He said the remarks by Finance Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz that the government has no legal ability to compel banks is disingenuous and insults the intelligence of the Malaysian people.
“Apart from the virus taking lives, health and livelihoods away from Malaysians, bringing on a healthcare crisis that is battering our healthcare system to the brink of collapse, the collateral economic crisis that is plaguing ordinary citizens is seemingly something the minister is unable to comprehend,” Lee said in a statement.
The Pasir Pinji assemblyman also criticised Tengku Zafrul for his condescending tone when he said the government does not control or own the banks, which is patronising and not entirely correct.
“The fact is Bank Simpanan Nasional and SME Bank are wholly owned by the ministry. EXIM Bank, Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Berhad bank, and Agrobank are all wholly-owned subsidiaries of MOF Incorporated.
“Bank Rakyat is currently under the supervision of the Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Ministry. The Finance Ministry owns five of the six Development Financial Institutions that I have mentioned, as have been pointed out by the former Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister Dr Muhammed Abdul Khalid,” he said.
Lee asked why Tengku Zafrul is at the very least unable to compel the banks under the charge of his own ministry and its agencies to give a blanket loan moratorium.
“If he cannot, would that not be the failure of the minister vis-a-vis the government’s failure? The least Tengku Zafrul and his government can do is to deliver one of the crying needs the struggling working-class desperately need.
“That would be a no compounding, no strings and conditions attached blanket loan moratorium. His country club chums who still run banks will still be raking in the millions if he does, but if he does not they will earn even more at the expense of the country’s most vulnerable classes,” he said.
Lee also found the minister’s response that the B40 category group will be provided an automatic loan moratorium to be peculiar, adding it is a matter of semantics.
“If it is going to be Automatic, why is there even an application process and why is approval needed? An application process is either just another hurdle to disincentive and make the applicants’ lives difficult, which in turn benefits the bank, or the minister is simply incompetent and unfit for the role that he has been given,” he said.
Lee also said the PN government lacked the moral basis or the legal ability to suspend parliamentary democracy and the Constitution, yet managed to find a way.
“The government can commandeer any asset and property backed by Emergency ordinances, and give passage to any public expenditure without a slither of parliamentary scrutiny. There must most certainly be a way to compel the banks to do something for the people.
“After all, is not this the whole basis of why the Emergency was proclaimed? To give extraordinary powers to the government to overcome the pandemic? If the government cannot, or chooses not to use its powers to fulfil this one demand from the people, then the state of Emergency was indeed just to save the PN government from their own political emergency, in its intent and outcome,” he said.
