PKR has accused the prime minister of ripping off Pakatan Rakyat’s policies and using it to lure taxi drivers into voting for BN in the coming general election.

NONE PKR director of strategy Rafizi Ramli ( right ) said this was proven by Najib Abdul Razak’s announcement yesterday on the distribution of 1,000 individual taxi permits.

The former said Najib’s action was tantamount to an “open admission” that the economic programmes announced by Pakatan Rakyat, through its Buku Jingga, Manifesto Rakyat and Common Policy, meets the demands of the people.

Rafizi said this also meant that Pakatan’s policies were feasible, contradicting claims by Umno that they would only bring about financial doom for the country, and reflected the desperate state the premier was in.

“Thirdly, this proves how desperate Najib is that he is not ashamed to copy Pakatan policies and programmes,” he said, in a statement issued today.

In condemning the BN chairperson’s action, Rafizi pointed out that to date, BN has yet to even announce its own manifesto.

“I fully criticise Najib’s statement, that tries to lure taxi drivers into voting for BN.

NONE “His speech was laced with political threats when he stated that taxi drivers must ‘bai’ ah’ (make a binding promise) to vote for BN, should they want more individual permits in the future.”

Nonetheless, he expressed confidence that the taxi driver fraternity were well aware that Najib’s promises are nothing more than a “political gimmick”.

Meanwhile, he said that the long -standing issue of individual taxi permits is one that the opposition has long been championing for.

In its manifesto, Pakatan has promised to abolish the present system of issuing taxi permits to select companies, which then lease the taxis to the drivers.

Instead, the permits would be issued directly to individual taxi drivers to encourage more "taxi entrepreneurs".

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