Believe it or not, this question raised Barisan Nasional ire in Parliament yesterday.
When yesterday’s sitting started and Deputy Finance Minister, Datuk Dr. Awang Adek presented the 2007 supplementary operating and development estimates totalling RM11.9 billion and explaining the details of the supplementary requests to the original 2007 estimates of RM159 billion, I stood up to ask for clarification.
I pointed out that under the Prime Minister’s Department, there was a request for an additional RM18.2 million expenditures for the 50th Merdeka anniversary celebrations. However, unlike many other items where supplementary estimates were being requested, it was not possible to find out from the Treasury memorandum tabled in Parliament what were the original estimates which had been budgeted for the Golden Jubilee Merdeka celebrations.
I asked Awang what was the original estimates to which an additional RM18.2 million allocation was being requested.
Who would have thought that such a simple-and-straightforward question nearly brought down the House, with the Deputy Minister stubbornly refusing to do so and even threatening to refuse to give way to me to seek clarifications when delivering his winding-up speech the next day, with Barisan Nasional MPs creating a din and demanding that I should cease and desist and stop posing such a question as if I had committed something sacrilegious in Parliament.
I rejected Awang’s argument that he would give the answer during his reply as such information should be at his finger tips unless there were reasons why he was not prepared to be forthcoming about the original estimates budgetted by the government for the 50th Merdeka anniversary celebrations.
I rebutted Awang’s argument that I was already debating the supplementary estimates in posing the question, as what I wanted was the most basic information so that an informed debate on the supplementary estimates could be conducted by MPs from both sides of the House.
In the event, the brute majority of the Barisan Nasional in Parliament prevailed and Awang did not enlighten Parliament as to what were the original estimates budgetted for the 50th Merdeka anniversary celebrations and the BN MPs were very happy about their ignorance!
Awang told me this morning that he has the answer to my question which he would give during the winding-up of the policy debate on the supplementary estimates later today.
Why was he so coy about giving the figure when he was asked yesterday?