PUTRAJAYA: Dr Mahathir Mohamad today dismissed the recent calls for him to stay on as prime minister until the end of the five-year mandate for Pakatan Harapan (PH).
He said he would keep his promise to resign from the top post once the country is “on an even keel” and can “carry on from there”.
“It can be two years, maybe three years. I do not know but we are working on that.
“Unless they push me to a corner and put a gun to my head to continue to finish my term, I will step down,” he told reporters after officiating a roundtable discussion on the workforce here.
Under a deal struck by the PH leadership, PKR president Anwar Ibrahim will succeed Mahathir as prime minister.
No time frame has been set for the transfer of power, but Mahathir has repeatedly said he does not want to stay for more than two or three years.
On Monday, PKR deputy president Mohamed Azmin Ali backed a call by PAS and Umno for Mahathir to remain as prime minister until the end of the five-year term.
Mahathir said Azmin’s call for him to stay on was the personal view of the economic affairs minister, adding however that he had given an undertaking.
He also played down a report by The Star that he had met with a group of opposition politicians on Tuesday who had pledged their support for him to complete a full term.
The paper had quoted sources as saying that the group comprised members of the new Umno-PAS pact and Gabungan Parti Sarawak.
Mahathir acknowledged that the meeting had taken place but said that he meets with everyone, not just opposition politicians.
“PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang has been saying all this while that he supports me. That is nothing new,” he added.
However, he refused to identify the politicians, saying only that they had come from different parties.
The prime minister also confirmed news that the proposal to acquire four highway toll concessionaires for RM6.2 billion had been put on hold.
He said the finance ministry appeared confident that the takeover could be done.
“Our problem is that we don’t have the money. But the finance ministry says by charging during peak hours, it can raise enough funds to pay for the acquisition of these four highways.
“We will have to see if that will be enough,” he said when asked to respond to a report by Singapore’s Strait Times that the takeover had been put on hold for a “re-examination of the offered price”.
Mahathir added that while the finance ministry had informed the Cabinet about the plan, the date of implementation would be decided by the Cabinet.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng recently said the Cabinet had agreed in principle to buying Gamuda Bhd’s stake in four Klang Valley highways. However, Mahathir later said no decision had been made.
On a separate issue, Mahathir said Putrajaya is still waiting for a plan by Lynas Corp on how the rare earth producer plans to deal with its waste.
He said this is one of the conditions set for Lynas by the government.
“We are waiting for them to tell us how they will do that, whether they can find a place to deposit the waste or not.”
He was responding to a report, also by the Straits Times, which claimed that Putrajaya would likely withdraw a demand for Lynas to export half a million tonnes of radioactive waste as a condition for licence renewal. - FMT
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