Government spokesperson Fahmi Fadzil today called on the people to ignore former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his antics, branding the nonagenarian as an “attention seeker”.
This comes in response to Mahathir’s claim yesterday that there is an increasing number of Malays committing suicide and murdering their parents due to rising costs of living.
Fahmi said he was puzzled about where the former premier got the data from, and in jest suggested that Mahathir could have been using some sort of magic.
“Perhaps he uses some other type of ‘ilmu’ (knowledge). It is hard for me to say factually what that might be, but I believe he is an attention seeker.
“At this juncture, I don’t think we should ‘layan’ (entertain) so much anymore.
“We respect him, so we will give him some space in his twilight years. Maybe he is under stress,” Fahmi told a press conference.
Yesterday, Mahathir, a two-time prime minister, joined a rally in front of Istana Negara seeking the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah’s intervention concerning a “failed” government.
During this event, he claimed that the high cost of living and economic situation were driving Malays to commit suicide and murder.
“There are those who killed their mothers, who killed their parents because they lost their source (of income) and are very pressured,” he had said.
He did not furnish evidence or statistics to back up the claim, but it is believed that Mahathir and the organisers of the rally had taken the information from a Bernama story about suicide cases in Kelantan.
The article, which the protesters cited in their memorandum to the palace, stated that 17 cases of people jumping from bridges had been recorded in Kelantan since 2021. – Malaysiakini