Bersatu reps’ boycotting of engagement session a ‘betrayal’: Chow

GEORGE TOWN – Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow is slamming the actions of four Bersatu assemblymen who are boycotting the inaugural engagement session between the state government and backbenchers here.

“This engagement is to ensure checks and balances during this administration since we can’t conduct the state assembly due to the state of emergency.

“Instead, they issued a statement to boycott this initiative with the reason that their allocation was withdrawn by the state government.

“I want to state that not 1 sen of the allocation for the four areas has been reduced,” Chow said.

Chow also assured that voters will not be penalised because of the betrayal of the four assemblymen.

“The voters in the four state assembly constituencies will not be persecuted but will continue to receive the amount in allocation as the government constituencies because they had chosen the Pakatan Harapan (PH) candidate in the 2018 general election.

“On the other hand, the four relevant reps have betrayed the trust and confidence of the voters, who chose them to contest under the PH coalition,” he said, adding that these four reps are already receiving allocations directly from Bersatu.

Though the full amount has been given without any reduction, there is a change in the mode of dispersing money. Voters get it directly through the district office.

“We thought of giving the allocation to them like how we have been giving it to the opposition before this, but we decided against it because it is not fair to punish the voters,” he said, explaining that the original opposition assemblymen were chosen by the voters, whereas the four reps who jumped ship were not.

This morning, four Perikatan Nasional opposition assemblymen, namely, Dr Afif Bahardin (Seberang Jaya), Zulkifli Ibrahim (Sg Acheh), Khaliq Mehtab Mohd Ishaq (Bertam) and Zolkifly Md Lazim (Teluk Bajang) announced they were boycotting the state’s engagement session, citing the state government’s supposed withdrawal of allocations approved on January 20 for the opposition assemblymen amounting to RM60,000.

“We, the opposition assemblymen, will continue our service and strive to obtain allocations from the Perikatan Nasional government, which is more caring and does not choose who to favour when implementing programmes and activities related to the people,” the statement read. – The Vibes, March 29, 2021