Malaysia's national debt - who's correct?
From a quick glance, it looks like the difference is that the new finance minister is including promised payments that the government had previously made, but hasn't had to pay yet. For example, say I borrow \$10 from you. At the same time, say I had previously promised (in an unrelated interaction) to give you \$5 at the start of June. What's my current debt to you? Officially, it's \$10 (from the loan you had given me). But come the first of June, if I haven't paid you back yet, I'll find myself in debt to you for \$15: \$10 from the loan, and the additional \$5 from the promise. Effectively, the new finance minister is counting the debt to be the entire \$15 (that is, current debt obligations, as well as promised future payments to different projects in Malaysia), while the official figure only considers my debt to be \$10 (since I don't yet technically owe you the additional \$5).

Technically, the government official figures are correct, since the government can "get out" of the future payments by (I'd assume) changing the law to remove themselves from that responsibility. At the same time, since (it looks like) those payments are to Malaysian government/private company partnership projects, simply refusing to pay would ultimately undermine Malaysian projects, which would hurt citizens. Which is more important depends on the context, and the interests of the individual.