Dr M floats idea of entering snap polls with ‘new party’

Should there be a snap election, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has teased that he and his supporters may contest under a new political party.

The 95-year-old also suggested that he would keep to the “sidelines” whilst still participating in campaigning.

He said this during a recent video interview with Hong Kong-based business news website Investvine when asked about the possibility of a snap election amid the present unstable political climate. 

“Well, I’ll be quite old by then. I will be on the sidelines perhaps, helping others, helping my own parties to contest and hopefully (we) might be able to gain some seats.

“But my own party (Bersatu) is now split into two - one part is with the government and one part is with me. They are trying their best to make sure I cannot contest under the party name.

“So we are faced with the possibility of having to contest under a different name, maybe a new party. So the position at this moment is very uncertain,” he answered.

In May, Mahathir and four of his supporters were booted out of Bersatu - the party he founded. 

This came after the group publicly broke away from party president Muhyiddin Yassin (above), whom Mahathir personally accused of betraying him for the prime minister's post. They had also sat as opposition MPs during the May 18 Dewan Rakyat sitting.

The group has since mounted a legal challenge against the move. 

Elaborating, the Langkawi MP reiterated his prediction that Bersatu will fare disastrously in a snap poll.

“Our own party - both the one inside the government and outside the government - we have lost the support of our previous coalition (Pakatan Harapan) and we are not getting the support of Umno and all that (from the) new coalition.

“So the performance will be very bad for the party,” he said during the interview.

Back in February, Bersatu quit the Harapan coalition and formed the Perikatan Nasional government with Umno, PAS, GPS, PBS and STAR in a political coup now known as the “Sheraton Move”.

However, PN’s fraught grip on power has led to concerns that its collapse was possible at any moment.

After Harapan repeatedly threatened to launch a counter-coup, some Umno leaders called for a snap election to solve the instability.

In a vote to remove the Dewan Rakyat speaker yesterday, it was revealed that PN had a wafer-thin majority of 111 against 109 from the opposition.  - Mkini