Lokman took offence with an Aug 1st tweet by Khairy where he and Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng argued over the goods and services tax (GST) and the sales and services tax (SST) in a YouTube video recording of a previous Parliament session.
“My exchange with @guanenglim yesterday on keeping the GST at a lower rate vs SST. @MOFmalaysia admits GST is better but essentially says it must go because it’s an election promise.
“Political populism wins over sound economic policy,” Khairy tweeted in August.
Lokman, a former finance officer during the Najib Razak administration, responded to the tweet last night.
“With this kind of finger-pointing attitude, don’t ever dream that you can ever become the president of Umno,” Lokman tweeted.
Khairy, who was the former youth and sports minister, replied: “You better pray I don’t become president of Umno.
“First thing I’ll do is sack you for having the IQ of a carrot.”
Khairy’s response was retweeted and “liked” by hundreds of users.
Some said Lokman had it coming, while others questioned his mention of carrots.
“Why you wanna diss the carrot YB, apa dosa lobak tu (what wrong did the carrot do?)” said Twitter user @anuarfariz.
Meanwhile, @mohan_louis said although he did not believe in Umno’s political ideologies, he would sign up as a member “just to vote against that carrot too, if it was possible”.
Another user said he had asked his friends in Umno what they should do to “save Umno”.
“Their response was to get rid of Lokman first. The rest is history,” said @FatahHebat.
This comes in the wake of a similar incident when Lokman had chided Khairy.
Khairy yesterday tweeted that Barisan Nasional (BN) lost in the 14th general election because of the 1MDB scandal.
He was responding to an English daily report quoting Najib as saying BN lost the election because of “fraud, defamation and false promises.”
Lokman then tweeted: “What to do, at that time @najibrazak had a stupid youth chief that never make (sic) any attempt to study about 1MDB and explain it to the public. He only knows how to choose the right colours of his socks.”