Government to probe any wrongdoing in forming Sabah govt — Dr M

KUALA LUMPUR: The federal government will investigate if there is any wrongdoing in forming the Sabah state government after the general election on May 9, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday.

He said there was evidence of manipulation and using money to get certain people to cross over.

“You can have people switching parties if they like because of principles but if they were bought over we will not recognise that as a proper change of party.

“We will investigate. If we find there is an element of corruption and money being paid to any minister or anybody else to cross over, we regard that as corruption,” he told a press conference here.

Dr Mahathir said the Malaysian Anti- Corruption Commission ( MACC) seemed to have ignored corrupt practices during the election and proper investigations needed to be carried out to iron out the issue.

“We will properly investigate all these things because we want to follow the rule of law.

“We are not taking revenge but there is a lot of failures where we have people using money to buy support; that also is considered as corruption as much as buying members of parties in order to achieve a majority,” he said.

Dr Mahathir said the government would request a proper investigation should there be evidence that a person won the election through corruption and would call that election invalid.