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PUTRAJAYA: Dr Mahathir Mohamad (pic) has advised Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to step down amid tensions between PPBM and Umno.

“The best advice I can give now is that you don’t look strong enough, just resign,” the former prime minister said at a press conference here.

He said he had warned Muhyiddin against working together with Umno, having predicted that the two parties would encounter problems in the future.

“When they were forming (the government), I told Muhyiddin: ‘You’re going to have trouble with Umno because Umno is the bigger party. You are the smaller party and you’ll depend on them. If they pull back, you are finished.’

“But he said he could handle the problem. I am going to see how he handles it,” said Mahathir.

According to Mahathir, Muhyiddin’s Perikatan Nasional administration was “the most unstable government in the history of Malaysia” due to its slim three-person majority in the Dewan Rakyat.

Mahathir’s call for Muhyiddin to step down comes on the crest of an anti-PPBM wave, which has also witnessed a majority of Umno’s 191 divisions calling for the party to withdraw its cooperation with PPBM.

Several prominent Umno leaders have also called for the party to retract its support for the PN government.

Last night, the Umno Supreme Council deferred any decision on the party’s support for PPBM to its annual general assembly at the end of this month.

Commenting on the rejection of the registration of his party Pejuang earlier today, Mahathir pointed out that PN had been registered within seven days, compared to Pejuang’s four-month wait.

He said that registry officers had said the party’s application was fit for approval, following several meetings and changes to Pejuang’s proposed constitution. “When we checked, they said there were no problems. But now they are saying that we did not fulfill some requirements, so our application was rejected. That is the situation now.” – FMT

He also claimed that the officers had told Pejuang that the party’s application had to be referred to home minister Hamzah Zainudin before a decision was made.

However Mahathir contended that the RoS had full power to approve or reject any application without the need for the minister to intervene, based on the law.

He said the reference to the ministry “means that that administration process has become a political matter,” adding that Pejuang would file an appeal tomorrow.