Dr M Says Najib Wants to Be PM Again, While Najib Says It’s Dr M Who’s Obsessed with the PM Post

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Former prime minister Najib Razak will make a comeback if he is found not guilty next week on corruption and money-laundering charges related to SRC International, said Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

“If he is found not guilty, I think that he will want to be prime minister again,” Dr Mahathir told The Malaysian Insight.

Najjua Zulkefli/TMI

“If he loses in court, then, of course, he will be disqualified,” said the 95-year-old at his office at Yayasan Al-Bukhrary.

Dr Mahathir was responding to a question on whether Perikatan Nasional will nominate Muhyiddin Yassin as their candidate for prime minister in the next elections.

There is also talk of snap elections this year as Muhyiddin attempts to get his own mandate.

“Generally speaking, Umno members feel that Umno should lead as they have the support. In fact, they have told Bersatu that although they are in a coalition now, they want to contest against Bersatu in the next elections.

“Umno believes it will be the biggest party in the coalition and they want to hold the reins of power,” said the former Umno president.

Barisan Nasional is currently the biggest bloc in PN with 42 MPs followed by Bersatu (31), PAS (18) and GPS (18).

Out of Bersatu’s 31, 15 are former Umno MPs and 10 former PKR lawmakers. Bersatu only has six MPs left from the group that won in 2018, after sacking another pro-Dr Mahathir supporter – Shahruddin Salleh of Sri Gading.

Dr Mahathir said Muhyiddin’s position as prime minister is insecure after it was shown in Parliament last week that PN only has 113 out of 222 MPs supporting it.

“As such, he is trying to stay in power by using methods which are not very democratic. This includes applying pressure on his own party to support him and even using money to induce people to support him

“But we feel we should go back to the original decision of the people, that is to say Pakatan Harapan is the choice of the people.

“So, we feel that having been supported by the people we should retain that support by getting back the position of government,” said Dr Mahathir.

The former Bersatu chairman said PN is not a proper coalition.

“In the first place there was no coalition. There was talk, led by Muhyiddin that there is Perikatan.

“But it has never been registered. It has no office. It’s something only in the minds of some people. Muhyiddin’s gives the impression there is a coalition.

-Najjua-Zulkefli/TMI

“I told him that if he joined them, he would be working with kleptocrats from Umno, I’m not prepared to do that.

“And I cannot accept Umno en bloc but Muhyiddin said he was prepared to work with Najib. And that’s how he became their leader and eventually prime minister.”

Dr Mahathir, who is also Langkawi MP, said the plan was to bring down PH all along and substitute it with a government made up of kleptocrats.

“To do that, they have to get more Malay support which could only come from Bersatu, so they had to persuade Bersatu to change course, by saying that DAP will destroy the Malays.

“Malays believed it and became frightened. So, some Bersatu members decided to leave Pakatan because of DAP. I didn’t agree with this.

“I said ‘let’s wait first, don’t make any decisions now’ but they rejected me. They decided we have to come out now.

“After that Muhyiddin was accepted by Umno and PAS to make up the numbers to form the government. I will never work with this group because of the presence of Najib.”

Following Dr Mahathir’s remark that Najib will want to be prime minister again, Najib branded his predecessor-turned-successor as a “strange individual”.

Although Najib did not mention if he harboured such ambition or otherwise, he, however, suggested that it is Dr Mahathir who appeared to be obsessed with the prime minister post.

“It was him who became PM7 after being the PM4.

“It was him who wanted to be PM8.

“It was him who announced that he wanted to be the PM9 candidate and criss-crossed the nation (campaigning about this).

“But I am the one he accuses of wanting to be PM again. This individual is strange,” he said in a Facebook post this morning.

Mahathir’s first tenure as prime minister was from 1981 to 2003.

He later came out of retirement to lead the Pakatan Harapan coalition to topple Najib and BN from power in the 2018 polls.

His second stint as the seventh prime minister ended in 22 months after Mahathir resigned, which led to the collapse of the Harapan government.

Mahathir then mooted the idea of becoming the prime minister of a unity government, but this failed to materialise.

Following this, Harapan and its allies claimed to possess the numbers to recapture Putrajaya from the nascent political alliance Perikatan Nasional and proposed Mahathir as the prime minister again for six months with PKR president Anwar Ibrahim serving as his number two.

However, Anwar and PKR refused to accept this arrangement, triggering a stalemate over the prime minister candidate issue.