Muhyiddin under ‘fantasy’ he can be PM again, says DAP’s Liew

 

FMT:

Muhyiddin under ‘fantasy’

he can be PM again, says

DAP’s Liew

FMT Reporters

-24 Aug 2024, 01:00 PM

The DAP deputy secretary-general says the Bersatu president’s current tiff with the royalty reinforces how he cannot move on from his short stint in power.

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DAP deputy secretary-general Liew Chin Tong’s said Bersatu is now a very disparate and distinctive group brought together by circumstances with little in common.

PETALING JAYA: 

Bersatu president Muhyiddin Yassin’s continued questioning of the events after the 15th general election is a 

sad reflection of his ethereal fantasy

 that he can be the prime minister again, says DAP’s Liew Chin Tong.

In a Facebook post, the DAP deputy secretary-general said it is no longer possible for Muhyiddin to be prime minister, given how even PAS has 

skilfully positioned

 Terengganu menteri besar Samsuri Mokhtar as the next prime ministerial candidate for the opposition coalition.

Liew said the Nenggiri by-election result and Muhyiddin’s current tiff with the royalty reinforce how the Bersatu president is still trapped in the past glory of his short stint in power and cannot move on.

When he continues to harp on the events of November 2022 that led him to question the formal judgement of the (former) king, it is indeed a sad reflection of his ethereal fantasy,

 he said.

Liew’s statement comes as numerous police reports and criticisms have been levelled at Muhyiddin for questioning Sultan of Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah for not giving him the prime minister’s post during the latter’s tenure as king.

In a ceramah during the Nenggiri by-election campaign, Muhyiddin claimed that 

for some reason

 he was not invited by Sultan Abdullah to be sworn in as prime minister after GE15 despite 

having the numbers

 needed to form the government.

Liew said Bersatu, as it is today, was formed when Muhyiddin came into power, and had been held together by the belief that he can make a comeback as prime minister having been forced out in August 2021.

“It was this idea that brought Perikatan Nasional a significant number of votes, with the help of PAS, and helped the coalition win 74 out of the 222 parliamentary seats in GE15.

For comparison, despite some defections, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim held together a core group of leaders from 1998 to 2022 despite having no access to power and being in jail for a significant part of that period (1998 to 2004, 2015 to 2018),

 he said.

Liew called the Sheraton Move, which launched Muhyiddin into the top post, a 

mathematical exercise

 that cannot be repeated, given 

PN’s latent unsustainability

.

“Muhyiddin’s makeshift governing coalition comprising three Malay parties – Bersatu, Umno and PAS – was not sustainable structurally. He also had to kick out Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s group from Bersatu and accepted PKR’s renegades led by Azmin Ali.

The other group in Bersatu that supported Muhyiddin was the Umno deserters led by Hamzah Zainudin. They won their seats on a Barisan Nasional ticket but abandoned their party when Umno lost power for the first time in history in GE14,

 he said.

What is the strength of Bersatu today? It is a very disparate and distinctive group brought together by circumstances with little in common. The split between Azmin and Hamzah is imminent.