PETALING JAYA: As more districts prepare to re-enter a third movement control order period, former prime minister Najib Razak said he has been losing sleep over the spike in cases and clusters.
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It was announced on Tuesday that six districts in Selangor would be placed under another MCO from today. In addition, Kuala Lumpur and parts of Johor, Terengganu and Perak will also be under MCO.
In a Facebook post published in the early hours of the morning, the Pekan MP lamented the poor handling of the pandemic by the government, and said his public complaints had routinely fallen on deaf ears, which has resulted in the surge of infections over the last few weeks.
He reiterated his calls for a “very tight and short” MCO to break the chain of infection, to allow the country to return to normalcy as quickly as possible.
“The MCO doesn’t need to be prolonged and repeated, and the government can avoid the need for new aid packages that add more fiscal burden to the government,” he said.
Reflecting on the last MCO, imposed in certain states in January, Najib said that because the “half-baked” MCO was lifted when case numbers were still high, it allowed the virus to spread more widely and embed itself in the community.
Now, he said, the conditions are worse than when MCO 2.0 was implemented, with more active clusters no longer primarily confined to workplaces and factories.
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He said the emergence of new variants is also troubling, adding that the government should never have reduced the quarantine period for arrivals from 14 days to seven, as it allowed the overseas mutations to enter the community.
Najib also expressed concern over the country’s fiscal position, with Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin recently saying the government is short in funds after spending RM340 billion on economic stimulus measures and RM322 billion on the 2021 budget.
He said a “never-ending” MCO would have dire consequences for the country, as a slow economy and increased government borrowing would end up hurting the people in the long run through national budget cuts and taxes.
“It’s very easy for the government to borrow multiple times or dig into their assets in order to help the people and claim to care about them.
“The MCO doesn’t need to be prolonged and repeated, and the government can avoid the need for new aid packages that add more fiscal burden to the government.”
He reminded the people to avoid going out unless necessary during the MCO, and to limit Hari Raya visits wherever possible.-FMT