PETALING JAYA: Economy minister Rafizi Ramli plans to work on improving his ministry’s public communications in light of “opposition propaganda”.
His statement follows Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s remark about the need for better communications by his government. Anwar said this when announcing the Cabinet reshuffle today.
In a Facebook post, Rafizi explained that he had spent the past year finalising decisions postponed by previous administrations and laying the groundwork for a better social assistance system.
With these policies set to be rolled out in 2024, Rafizi said he now had some time to focus on another key task – countering “opposition propaganda”.
“Before this, I did not pay much attention to it because I devoted my time to ensuring that crucial policy decisions were made to improve the country’s economic structure,” he said.
“From now on, I will also focus on enhancing my ministry’s communications and that of the entire government, including addressing ignorance. One way to do this is by exposing the fallacies of the opposition’s arguments.
“Politics is competition. Political parties compete to convince the people, and there are various ways to compete. The opposition now chooses to deceive the people with racial sentiments, the rejection of facts and the diversion of people’s attention from real issues.
“If someone hits (you) unfairly, don’t hesitate to hit back. This is the time to counter Perikatan Nasional’s deceptions.”
However, Rafizi did not provide any example of the “opposition propaganda” he was referring to.
When announcing the Cabinet reshuffle earlier today, Anwar said one reason he decided to split the communications and digital ministry was because communicating effectively through social media had been a struggle for the government.
“The criticism against us is that there are impressive policies, but the delivery and communications are not satisfactory,” he said.
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