‘Resign-lah’, Dr Mahathir tells beleaguered Muhyiddin

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin should resign now rather than wait to be ousted by United Malays National Organisation (Umno), said Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The former Prime Minister said he had warned his old party colleague about the perils of working with Umno but the warning had fallen on deaf ears.

“The problem is when we advise them, they do not want to listen. That is the problem,” Dr Mahathir said in a press conference at the Perdana Leadership Foundation on Thursday (Jan 7).

“The best advice now is, when you see things are unstable, resign-lah,” 

Bersatu co-founder Dr Mahathir was staunchly against joining Perikatan Nasional (PN) when party president Mr Muhyiddin wished to take the party out of Pakatan Harapan to ally with Umno.

Dr Mahathir said Muhyiddin had assured him that the problems arising from cooperation with Umno were “manageable” when he had pointed them out.

“I predicted this at the time. 

“I told Muhyiddin you are going to be in trouble because you are a small party. If they (Umno) pull back, you are finished. But he said he could handle the problem. So we will see how he can handle it.”

He also slammed PN for being too busy with politics to serve the people.

“This is the most unstable government in the history of Malaysia. We used to have a two-thirds majority but now we only have a majority of two or three.

“This is the reason the government spends all its time defending itself from falling and not focusing on the people,” Dr Mahathir said.

Tensions between Umno and PN have flared up again over claims the former has been sidelined by the government.

Umno refused Mr Muhyiddin’s invitation to officially join the PN coalition, asking instead that Bersatu join it and PAS in Muafakat Nasional (MN). The MN charter is made up of Umno and PAS and is seeking to be registered as an official entity.

MPs of the country’s biggest Malay party have also flirted with the idea of allying with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to oust and replace the PN government.

Mr Anwar previously said he had “strong, formidable and convincing” numbers to topple the PN government, with Umno lawmakers rumoured to be among those numbers. THE MALAYSIAN INSIGHT