This is in complete opposition to that expressed by the Deputy Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, who has time and again reiterated that he is Malay first and Malaysian second. High tourism tax fee plans In 2016, he was criticised for his decision of threatening to stop tourism funding from his ministry to Sabah and Sarawak if both the states did not implement a proposed tourism service tax fee of between RM5 and RM30 on each hotel room booking. In response to his statement, the Sabah State Tourism, Environment and Culture Assistant Minister Pang Nyuk Ming stated: Following criticism over his tourism tax fee plan by Sarawak State Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports Minister Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, Nazri responded by chiding the minister by calling him a “greenhorn” and “behaving like a gangster”. His response received backlash from other government-allied parties who perceived his words as being “too rude” and “far from being constructive”. Abdul Rahman Dahlan was attacked with similar words after Nazri perceived him as being defensive towards Karim. As a result of his comment, the Sarawak state government made a decision to withdraw their participation from Tourism Malaysia. Nazri continued with his stance and said he did not regret the Sarawak decision while stressing that he did not intend to punish Sarawak and would be fair towards the state. According to Nazri, he was forced to make the remarks against the Sarawak minister after being accused of eroding and not respecting the Sarawak state rights. Nazri also questioned the Sarawak state government for not expressing their objections several months earlier in Parliament and the Cabinet, to which the DAP also claimed they had been opposing the bill alone at the time without the support from any of the Sabah and Sarawak government-allied politicians. However, according to Sabah State Tourism, Culture, and Environment Minister, Masidi Manjun, both states had indeed objected the proposed tax in the previous year before its tabling in the Parliament, whereas the federal government continued to enact the Tourism Tax Act 2017 to impose a levy on all tourists. Nevertheless, as stated by Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen: once a bill is tabled in Parliament without any opposition from the members of parliament (MPs) of the government-allied parties during the session, the bill is sure to be approved because of the sheer number of the ruling government MPs in Parliament. He further