Even then, the promise made in PR’s 13th general election manifesto was conditional on the opposition coalition winning the polls, said Mohd Ashraf Mustaqim.

“But PR didn’t succeed in becoming the government and, hence, they didn’t have the financial resources to provide free education,” he told a press conference here.

“This time around the new coalition Pakatan Harapan (PH) has decided to renew that promise, to make education at public universities available for free if the people give them the mandate to govern the country.”

Ashraf, who studied at Universiti Selangor (Unisel), was responding to Umno Sungai Besar division chief Jamal Yunos’ allegation that the Selangor government failed to live up to its free education promise.

Jamal had staged a protest outside the Unisel campus yesterday, during which he urged its students to pressure the state government to fulfil the free education promise.

According to Ashraf, even though opposition-ruled Selangor never promised free education, menteri besar Azmin Ali had gone out of his way to help Unisel’s students by abolishing fees for foundation studies.

“What about the federal government? They have all the resources to do this, but they instead cut allocations for public universities and raised tuition fees.

“The cost of providing free tertiary education is only about RM5 billion to RM8 billion. The revenue the federal government collected from GST is over RM40 billion.

“So why can’t it afford to give free education?”

The Barisan Nasional government’s Budget 2017 saw the allocation for the higher education ministry slashed by 9.3% to just RM250 million.

Higher Education Minister Idris Jusoh said the reduction was in line with efforts to reduce the 70% to 90% dependence of public universities on the government.