“The government should not burden the people to donate funds in order to help it meet its debt obligations,” he said when the debating the Agong’s address in the Dewan Rakyat today.

“To be a populist government, they seek funds from the people, whereas the people are already burdened with all kinds of taxes,” he said.

“This is a populist move. I think the people should reject this,” he said.

Zahid said this following an interjection by Ahmad Mazlan (BN-Pontian) who had pointed out that the country’s debts should be paid by the government without involving the people.

“What is being done by the PH government is to look for excuses, they have lost a lot of revenue with the abolition of the GST and then blamed it on government debts,” Ahmad said.

“I would like to ask Bagan Datuk (Zahid) where in the world, other than South Korea, do they ask for donations to settle the government’s debts,” he said.

He said the government, and not the public, should be paying for the national debt.

The fund was launched on May 30 as a means for the people to help the government meet its RM1 trillion debt obligations.

To date, the fund has collected RM153,926,454.67 in donations.

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