PETALING JAYA: Senior Pakatan Harapan (PH) leaders Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and Lim Guan Eng have brushed aside claims that there is a plot to remove Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as prime minister.
Anwar, said the claims, made by a PAS leader in his blog, were “mere lies” and a “non-issue”.
He said the motive behind the Islamist party’s claims was to divert attention from investigations into its allegations that it had received RM90 million of 1Malaysia Development Bhd money.
Some PAS leaders have been accused of pocketing the money from the sovereign fund given to them by Umno.
Anwar, who was speaking to journalists after delivering a keynote address on education at Universiti Selangor, here, noted that Pakatan parties had also dismissed the allegations.
“Nobody wants to dwell on it because they think it is a non-issue and a PAS attempt to deflect the focus from the money taken from 1MDB,“ he stressed.
On Sunday, PAS secretary-general Datuk Takiyuddin Hassan was quoted as saying that PAS had decided to offer its support in writing to Mahathir because the Islamist party believed that there was an attempt by some quarters in Pakatan to initiate a vote of no-confidence against him.
Takiyuddin said that PAS had pledged to support Mahathir in the event that the plot unfolded. Asked about the letter to show PAS’s support for Mahathir, Anwar said “it may be untrue”.
“They (PAS) have permitted lying, so we don’t know if it’s true or not. They have said that they can lie to save the party, so we don’t know if it is true,“ he said.
Anwar said that when he met Mahathir recently, the matter was not discussed.
Queried if he would be discussing it with Mahathir, he said that there was no need.
The government machinery must focus on the economy instead of entertaining rumours, he added.
DAP secretary-general Lim, has also rubbished the claim.
“I want to stress that Pakatan gives their undivided support to Mahathir,“ Lim said in a statement.
Lim, who is also the Finance Minister, said that Pakatan rejected any attempt to undermine their support for Mahathir through dubious means.
“It is a fraud, slanderous and a lie,“ he declared.
