PERAK Caretaker Second Finance Minister Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah has claimed that former deputy prime minister-cum-finance minister Anwar Ibrahim was trying to topple the then-prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad during the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

He said that Anwar was trying to implement all the policies that would have caused 30,000 companies to go bankrupt.

“I went to see him. I said, why did he say at that time (in) Indonesia, Suharto was taken over by BJ Habibie.

“He said, ‘As such, it will eventually become the Indonesian style, I will be the prime minister.’ This is true,” said Husni during a joint interview in Ipoh today.

He claimed that Anwar told him that the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada will loan Malaysia RM20 billion after the country goes bankrupt if all their policies were implemented.

But luckily, he said that Mahathir had introduced capital controls and a fixed exchange rate to help Malaysia overcome the crisis.

Husni said that Anwar was a Malay studies graduate who didn’t have economic knowledge and had never worked in a bank.

“When he became the finance minister, he wanted to become finance minister, (former finance minister) Daim (Zainuddin) coached him.

“And then his relationship with America is very strong, and IMF (was) controlling him. Don’t play with foreign powers, when a foreign power controls you, they will help you (but) they want something back,” he said.

Husni also said that there had been no major contribution to the people in all four of the states ruled by Pakatan Rakyat in the last five years.

Citing Selangor as an example, he said that the BN federal government had pumped in RM16 billion for the operational and development expenditure of the state last year.

“You know how much is Selangor’s budget per year? (It is) RM1.6 bilion. If not for RM16 billion of the operating expenditure and development expenditure given by the federal government for 2012, the state would be a gone case,” he added.

As this coming Sunday will be the polling day for the 13th general election, the incumbent Tambun parliamentary seat candidate is urging the people to continue to support BN chief Najib Abdul Razak to complete his ‘transformation’ programmes in the country.

He said that currently Malaysia’s GNI is RM970 billion, but it will raise up to RM1.7 trillion in year 2020 and thus, everybody will enjoy a bigger economic cake.

Noting that support in his constituency has grown since the last general polls, Husni said that there are a “golden seven years” for all the Malaysians to take the opportunity to make Malaysia a high income nation in 2020.