At 92, Mahathir Mohamad named as Malaysian opposition’s PM candidate

Malaysia’s opposition coalition yesterday named former premier Mahathir Mohamad, 92, as its prime ministerial candidate for an election that must be called by August.

With the country’s most popular opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in jail, Dr Mahathir is seen as the biggest threat to prime minister Najib Razak, who is engulfed in a corruption scandal.

Dr Mahathir, who earned a reputation during his 22-year tenure as prime minister as an authoritarian, will become the world’s oldest leader if the opposition wins.

A victory could also pave the way for his former foe Mr Anwar to become prime minister.

Dr Mahathir and Mr Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, will be the Pakatan Harapan coalition’s candidates for the premier and deputy prime ministerial posts, secretary general Saifuddin Abdullah said at the alliance’s convention.

If the opposition wins, its parties have agreed to urgently try to obtain a royal pardon for Mr Anwar so that he could “immediately play a role in the government and subsequently be proposed as a candidate for prime minister”, Mr Saifuddin said.

The Mahathir-Anwar coalition is a turnaround from their bitter feud, which has shaped Malaysia for two decades.

After Dr Mahathir and Mr Anwar fell out in the 1990s, the latter was jailed on sodomy and corruption charges, after being sacked as deputy prime minister. He dismissed the charges as politically motivated.

He later led an opposition alliance to stunning electoral gains in 2013 before he was jailed again in 2013 for sodomising an aide, a charge he and his supporters describe as an attempt to end his career.

Mr Najib has been embroiled in a scandal involving state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad. In lawsuits, the US justice department claimed that $4.5 billion (Dh16.5bn) was misappropriated from 1MDB.

The fund has denied wrongdoing and Mr Najib, who founded it, was cleared of wrongdoing by Malaysia’s attorney general.