After thanking the news portal for doing a fact check on the spat between the PKR vice-president and the BN, the party’s strategic communications team suggested that they carry out similar fact checks on anything the opposition says.
“He repeatedly called us ‘hantu’ but Malaysiakini now shows that the esteemed YB is worse than ‘hantu’,” said the BN strategic communications team.
Feeling vindicated by the news portal’s report, the BN team said it echoed their own comments on the allegations by Rafizi against the government on MRT pricing and comparisons made with projects overseas.
“Malaysiakini’s fact checks had confirmed much of our rebuttals against Rafizi’s continued lies, especially on the cost of the first phase of the MRT Sungai Buloh-Kajang line being RM21 billion for 21km, when it was actually for 51km.
“He had over-estimated the budget by RM30 billion,” the BN strategic communications team said in a statement released today.
The BN also brought up the issue of the “bare tunnel”, calling it an attempt by Rafizi to pass on a bare tunnel project in Barcelona as an MRT project in an attempt to compare it with the complete MRT project in Malaysia.
“It was clearly an attempt to say Malaysia’s MRT project is more expensive than what was just a tunnel construction project in Spain.”
Pleased that the news portal had confirmed Rafizi used information from an unverified and anonymous WordPress blog called “Pedestrian Observation”, the BN team said it also confirmed the fact that Rafizi had indeed taken only two “low” examples from the 25 MRT projects listed, simply to try and justify his accusation that the government was overpaying.
“We thank Malaysiakini for its fact check to confirm what we had pointed out. It is both appalling and unbelievable that a supposed Member of Parliament would resort to such deceit in order to incite hatred towards the government.
“We note that Rafizi Ramli has neither apologised nor admitted wrongdoing on the above. We do not expect him to be honest enough to do so.”
In their report, the news portal concluded however, that both BN and Rafizi had been selective in choosing facts to push their arguments.
Meanwhile, BN also accused the Pandan MP of having “myopic and unstrategic thinking” by making a big issue using false information and by ignoring the great benefits that the MRT project will bring to the people.
“Efficient public transport projects such as the MRT are investments that last for decades that will put money back into the pockets of Malaysians from time-savings, reduced transport and car ownership costs. Malaysians also benefit from increased well-being and reduced stress.
“Yet, Rafizi continues to make this an issue while completely ignoring that the benefits to both the government and the people far outweigh the cost,” the BN said.
The spat between Rafizi and the BN stategic communications team erupted about a month ago, shortly after the MRT phase one was launched in mid-December.