PETALING JAYA, Jan 8 — Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) announcement of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as their prime minister candidate can affect Malaysia’s economy and scare off investors, an Umno supreme council member claimed today.
Kuala Selangor MP Datuk Seri Irmohizam Ibrahim said investors would be worried and doubtful of former prime minister Dr Mahathir’s leadership, pointing out that the citizens of Zimbabwe, on the other hand, had revolted against the three-decade authoritarian rule of former president Robert Mugabe.
“In my opinion Tun Mahathir would only use his position as a stepping stone to prepare his son Datuk Seri Mukhriz as PM, as history has shown he fired his deputies for power when he was PM.
“Would history repeat itself now that he is in PH?” he said in a statement today.
Irmohizam said PH’s move has triggered unsatisfactory feelings among 1998 reformists within the coalition, who had protested Dr Mahathir’s sacking of deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim that year.
“The principles of PKR’s struggle have merely confused the people and disappointed their supporters,” he said.
