Rafizi slams 'luxury culture' creeping into party ranks as voters watch

Summary

• Rafizi Ramli warns party members serving in the government that voters are scrutinising their conduct.

• The PKR deputy president says if officials fall into the trappings of government luxury, voters will conclude that they are no different from their predecessors.

Incumbent PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli delivered a pointed caution last night against party members succumbing to the luxuries and entitlements that accompany their new governmental power.

During his ceramah in Pahang, Rafizi warned party members serving in government that voters are scrutinising their conduct, particularly what he described as the creeping “government's way of luxury” threatening to normalise within party ranks.

“Someone told me this - a young person who was criticising me on Twitter. The person said: Now that we’re in government, act like the government. Why bother holding events in halls without air conditioning? Others use hotels, what’s wrong with that? We’re the government now.

“You haven’t experienced it yet - being in government? What if we are no longer the government? What if we lose suddenly? What if we need to rebuild our party?

“If we teach our party members to embrace excessive luxury and quick money, it not only weakens us, our party’s identity, our members, and our leadership…

“… More dangerously, the public watches and will say: You’re no different from those before you. Even though we set high expectations that if you became the government, you would change everything,” the incumbent PKR deputy president said.

The ceramah in Pahang is part of Rafizi’s nationwide campaign tour called Jelajah Hiruk. The economy minister is defending his deputy presidency against Nurul Izzah Anwar in the PKR central leadership election on May 23.

Nurul Izzah is a PKR vice-president, having been appointed to the position in 2022.

From shacks and coffee shops to hotels

Yesterday, government backbencher Wong Chen lamented that former opposition parties that are now part of the government appear to have “lost their roots” and embraced money politics.

Speaking at an event in Kuala Lumpur, the PKR lawmaker said a “rotten political culture” can be observed in the recent party polls of Pakatan Harapan component members.

He then reminisced about how PKR’s operations, in particular, seem to have strayed from its original methods as a party which consistently claimed to lack funding.

“Back in the old days when I first joined PKR, we would hold our ceramahs at a pondok (shack) or in a coffee shop. Nowadays, it’s being done in hotels.

“Where did all this money come from? I don’t know. My money is enough to support my family, (but) not my political career,” Wong said.

Wong was addressing an audience at the launch of political economist and activist Edmund Terence Gomez’s book, titled “Misgovernance: Grand Corruption in Malaysia”.

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