Anwar confident Harapan will now refocus on struggle instead of PM candidate

PKR president Anwar Ibrahim said that following his meetings with DAP and Amanah leaders over the past week, Pakatan Harapan will now refocus on their struggle and fight for the rakyat instead of being distracted by the prime ministerial candidate issue.

“I am confident that Harapan, from what I can see from my meetings with the DAP, Amanah and PKR leadership this week, especially in the last few days, I think we will return to focus on fighting for the rakyat, focus on the issue of poverty (and others).

“Otherwise, the current prime minister and the ministers will do whatever they like. As we are busy talking about the (prime ministerial) candidate, they are busy distributing wealth (among themselves).

“The number of unemployed is almost reaching 1.5 million but to win the hearts of the leaders and MPs, they are all given rewards one by one,” Anwar said in a Facebook Live session tonight.

He said there were so many ministers and deputy ministers in the cabinet that the public does not recognise most of them especially because they do not know what these leaders are doing.

Harapan, meanwhile, must remember what is more important and that is to return to their struggle, he said.

“We cannot act as if we are still exposing our necks and still being dragged here and there, breaking up and fighting and then following his whims on the candidate,” Anwar said.

Though he did not mention names, he was likely referring to former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Previously, Mahathir had been suggested as Harapan’s prime ministerial candidate again in their counter-coup efforts against the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government.

Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Shortly after PKR rejected this, Mahathir then announced that Warisan president Shafie Apdal had been proposed for the position and that this proposal had the support of DAP and Amanah.

DAP and Amanah, however, said they viewed Shafie's nomination as an option and needed to discuss the matter internally as well as at the Harapan presidential council.

Anwar took another veiled jab at Mahathir when he said Harapan should not rely on a “brittle branch that will later stab” them.

“I stress to Harapan, if we want to stay together to maintain the course of our struggle, we should not dismantle the spirit of Harapan.

“We should not act as if we are desperate and forced to rely on a brittle branch that will later stab us as what has happened before. (By) resigning as he likes without referring to anyone, he caused a mess for us, breaking our principles as well as our manifesto and other things,” he said.

Mahathir had resigned as prime minister on Feb 24 after former PKR deputy president Azmin Ali triggered a coup in what is now dubbed as the Sheraton Move.

At that time, it had been speculated that Mahathir resigned as he did not want to work with those who had initiated the coup.

However, Mahathir’s resignation effectively meant the dissolution of the Harapan cabinet, which eventually led to the formation of the PN government led by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

In the past month, Harapan and its allies have claimed that they have enough support amongst MPs to wrest back power but their momentum was halted by an impasse between Mahathir and Anwar over who should be the coalition's prime ministerial candidate.

PKR has been opposed to Mahathir as the prime ministerial candidate and wants Anwar instead. - Mkini