KUCHING, June 28 — Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) president Tan Sri Dr James Masing today urged former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to stop playing politics after he named Sabah’s Chief Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal as Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) prime minister candidate in the event the coalition wrests back the federal government.

He said this was merely a ploy to get Sarawak and Sabah to support his hidden political agenda.

“I know that Shafie is a good and capable leader, but Dr Mahathir should not take Sabahans and Sarawakians for fools by proposing the Sabahan leader to be the prime minister after the 15th general election (GE15),” Masing, who is also the deputy chief minister, told Malay Mail.

“There is no way peninsular Malaysian voters would accept Shafie as the prime minister should PH win GE15,” he said.

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Separately, Sarawak’s People Aspiration Party (Aspirasi) president Lina Soo described Dr Mahathir’s naming of Shafie as the eighth prime minister as a strange proposal.

“He has forgotten that he has no power to decide who can be the prime minister of Malaysia,” she said, stressing that such power lies absolutely with the King.

She said according to Article 43(2)(a) of the Federal Constitution the Agong shall appoint an MP whom His Majesty believes commands the majority support of his peers as Prime Minister.  

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“He has also no power to decide who our deputy prime minister can be when there is no provision even in our Constitution for the position of deputy prime minister, let alone two, of which one is to include his son,” Soo said.

She was referring to Mahathir’s proposal for Shafie to be the prime minister with PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and Mahathir’s son, Datuk Seri Mukhriz, as deputy prime ministers.

“If Dr Mahathir wishes to throw the cat amongst the pigeons with his call for Shafie to be the next prime minister, it is not likely it will make any splash,” she said, adding that the people are now accustomed to his eccentricities in his bid to hold on to power.

“After all it was Mahathir and him alone who betrayed the people by resigning as prime minister in February, paving the way for the new Perikatan Nasional (PN) regime.  

“What is even more bewildering now is that when the country is facing the Covid-19 pandemic and economic desperation, his only obsession is with the prime minister’s post, his politician son, and playing political parties against each other,” she said.

Soo, however, supports Shafie to be the prime minister if it only means to relocate one million illegal immigrants from Sabah to Kedah and Penang, return Labuan island back to Sabah and restore all Sarawak and Sabah’s rights over oil and gas.