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Muhyiddin who? Najib’s still the real problem in Malaysia: Mahathir
- Malaysia’s former prime minister believes his disgraced rival Najib Razak, still facing charges over the 1MDB scandal, is plotting a political comeback
- In an exclusive interview, he calls on MPs to help him and on-off ally Anwar Ibrahim launch a counter-coup against his successor Muhyiddin Yassin
Reading Time:5 minutes
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Malaysia’s political crisis has been pitched by commentators as one between elder statesman Mahathir Mohamad and Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin – but that is not how the 94-year-old veteran leader sees it.
For Mahathir, the real adversary remains Najib Razak, the former prime minister he trounced in the 2018 polls, only to have the defeated 66-year-old re-emerge as a political force.
In an extensive interview with This Week In Asia, the two-time former prime minister painted a picture of Muhyiddin as a weak acolyte of Najib, whom he believes will do everything he can to avoid jail time for the dozens of corruption charges he is facing over the 1MDB financial scandal.
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While recent chatter has focused on whether Mahathir’s counter political coup will succeed – given a supposed impasse with his on-off ally Anwar Ibrahim – the nonagenarian stressed it was not Anwar who was in his cross hairs.
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Mahathir said Anwar and him “have to be together”.
“Without being together, we will not have the kind of clout we need to unseat the government, and the government has a frail majority,” he said.
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