The Kerala kerbau-ing continues

FMT:

Tommy Thomas’ claims shocking and ‘fantastic’, says Dr M

PETALING JAYA: Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has broken his silence on former attorney-general Tommy Thomas’ tell-all book, expressing shock and bemusement over some of the claims.

In a lengthy statement, Mahathir said Thomas’ account over his resignation as prime minister was “quite fantastic” as Thomas did not have knowledge of some of the things he wrote about.

For instance, he denied telling Thomas that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong wanted to appoint then deputy prime minister Dr Wan Azizah Ismail as interim prime minister.

“This is nonsense”, said Mahathir.

While he admitted that his resignation was a personal choice, Mahathir said there was no way the Pakatan Harapan Cabinet could have remained as it had lost majority support to remain as government.

“I cannot fathom how a lawyer was unable to comprehend that this was not a change of prime minister. The PH government had lost.

“The Agong could not appoint Wan Azizah, the deputy prime minister as acting prime minister. Like me, she did not have a majority after PH was overthrown by PPBM leaving together with (Mohamed) Azmin’s (Ali) faction of PKR or Justice Party. Neither did the Cabinet.”

Mahathir also admitted that he had expected to win when the Agong met with MPs to hear their views on who should lead the next government, as Perikatan Nasional secretary-general Hamzah Zainudin had obtained statutory declarations from all Umno and PAS members supporting him.

“Hamzah’s plan was to get me to head a new coalition consisting of Umno, PAS and PPBM. I would still be prime minister and that should persuade me to leave PH.”

He added that Pakatan Harapan’s MPs had named opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim as their candidate instead, after the latter claimed that he had the majority support to become prime minister although he only had a total of 92 MPs on his side.

“I managed to get only 62. So both of us lost.”