Dr M: GST the culprit for BN's reduced majority win

PUTRAJAYA: The impact of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the rising cost of living are the reasons for Barisan Nasional's (BN) reduced majority in its win in Rompin, said former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
"The win shows the opinion of the people in Rompin. They still support BN, but the support has grown lesser. BN has to pay attention to this and analyse what this voting trend means," he told the media after his keynote address at the Perdana Discourse Series 19: Islam & Islamisation at Perdana Leadership Foundation.
Mahathir denied that his strong criticism of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak may have contributed to BN's reduced majority.
"The focus should be on GST, and the rising cost of living. Not 1MDB as most of the villagers in Rompin may not know what 1MDB is. They wouldn't be able to imagine how much RM42 billion is, to them RM1 million or RM1 billion is the same," he added.
He said their focus would most likely be on the cost of living, the people are discovering that their purchasing power is diminishing and to top it off they have to pay GST.
On today's by-election in Permatang Pauh, he said it is likely that the opposition would still win the seat.
"Although the opposition is fragmented, they would still win the seat, maybe with a smaller margin."
In his keynote address, Mahathir made a call for all Muslims to come back to the original teachings of the Quran rather than the interpretations by Muslim leaders.
"There were a lot of scientists and mathematicians during Islam’s glory days in the past. Now we have a mathematician who downloads 30,000 child pornography videos because we don’t follow the Quran anymore," he said, referring to Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin, a maths scholar on a Mara scholarship at the Imperial College of London, who was found to be in possession of over 30,000 videos and photographs of child pornography.