Our own people tried to reject our success in GE14, says Dr M

Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the Prime Minister’s Office in Perdana Putra after Pakatan Harapan’s election victory. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has revealed that there were attempts to persuade Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) Malay elected representatives to jump ship to Umno and PAS after the announcement of the 14th general election results.

In an interview published in regional magazine Mekong Review, Mahathir admitted the coalition had faced “lots of difficulties” in the hours after the election, including attempts from within PH to reject its own success.

“It had to do with racial and religious politics. There was a fear that our coalition was not going to respect the position of Islam as much as the previous government had, so there was an idea that if the Muslims all came together – the new opposition were largely Muslim, with Umno and PAS – they could drag other Muslims (from our coalition), have the majority and form a Malay-Muslim government, but they were advised against that.

“So the transition was smooth from the outside, but it was not very smooth from the inside. We had lots of difficulties, including attempts from within to reject our success, but in the end better sense prevailed,” he said in the interview with Eddin Khoo, a journalist and founder-director of cultural organisation Pusaka.

Mahathir said if PH’s Malay representatives had been persuaded to cross over, Umno and PAS would have had the majority to form the government.

He also said the delay in announcing the election results was due to such behind-the-scenes manoeuvring.

“We knew we had won by 8.30pm, but we didn’t get the official announcement until about 2am, because during that short period of time there was a lot of manoeuvring, which was not visible to the people. We knew, and later we learnt even more about it.”

Mahathir said PH had expected to lose in the May 9 polls because the government then was so powerful. He also claimed it was doing all kinds of “improper things” including acts of bribery and threats.

“I thought that if they lost they would not accept the result, but they lost by such a big margin that they were caught off guard and did not know what to do. Great numbers had supported the opposition, and there were also people who advised the government to accept the results.”

Mahathir added that a certain mindset was needed before democracy could succeed.

“When a country suddenly becomes democratic, it cannot really handle the kind of freedom that comes with democracy. And because of that it tends to slip back into its old ways.

“Malaysia succeeded because, though we tried to bring down the government by other means, we didn’t become violent, we didn’t take to the streets, we didn’t sabotage things, we didn’t assassinate people. We were forced to wait until there was an election,” he said in the interview.

Mahathir admitted that there was corruption during his time, as well as that of previous prime ministers, but said it was not as damaging to the country as during Najib Razak’s administration.

“Under Najib there was total destruction of the government. First, there were huge borrowings, which we now find great difficulty paying back. Second, the entire government machinery was subverted – senior officers were won over by money to become loyal to the (former) prime minister, even to the point of campaigning for the ruling party during the last election.

“We have inherited a country carrying a huge debt, and government machinery that is not working. We promised we would not seek revenge, but we find there is no way out – we have to get rid of the people who remain loyal to the previous government. They could sabotage whatever it is we want to do in order to rehabilitate the country.

“But if we get rid of these senior people, who will replace them? If junior people are not affected and are skilled enough we can just promote them, but we find that not only number one but numbers two, three and four – all of them, down the line – are corrupt. We can’t simply promote the person at the fifth level to the first level, so we are faced with a real problem there,” he said.

Asked about a possible solution to the problem, Mahathir said it would take time.

He said the government would have to look for people from the outside who were not committed to politics.

On what he hoped to achieve before making way for PKR president Anwar Ibrahim, Mahathir said he would like the debt problem to be settled and to rebuild the government.

“I know I can’t last forever. In two years, I will be 95, and I already hold the record as the oldest elected prime minister in the world. I have no wish to be a 100-year-old prime minister.

“I want to do the most I can in these two years. It is tough. I have this table – several tables – covered in papers, and I get lots of visitors, but I think considerable progress has been made.

“When I came in as prime minister in 1981, the whole government machinery was there. I just needed to put people in a few positions and everything worked fine. But now I don’t even know if my decisions and the decisions of the government will be carried out in the ways they should.” - FMT