KUALA LUMPUR, JUNE 19- Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad today praised the Opposition coalition for “maturing” and behaving more “sensible”, adding that this bodes well for the country’s future.
He was referring to the fact that Pakatan Rakyat allies DAP and PAS had refused to take part in the Black 505 rallies protesting alleged fraud during the May 5 elections.
But, both PAS and DAP have taken part in the rallies and some of them were the main speakers.
The series of nation-wide rallies, organized by PKR, will culminate this Saturday at Padang Merbok.
“Only one party is demonstrating, the other two are sensible. I couldn’t believe they could ever be sensible, but they actually are,” said Dr Mahathir in his speech at the Perdana Foundation Leadership CEO Forum 2013.
“They told that party (PKR) they are not going to have this 505 rally. So we are maturing, even the opposition are maturing,” he said.
He stressed that the opposition had every right to accuse the government of electoral fraud, but they should not resort to “disrupting the country”.
“Street demonstrations are not very productive. If we are more mature, and we can accept that… this country would have a better future.
“But we are going towards there, because this time around, even though the opposition is accusing the government of fraud, we have found they are broken up over this issue.”
But he chided Pakatan for not accepting the reality of the May 5 results, pointing out that in any democracy, one party must lose for the other party to win.
“One of the things about democracy is that when we practice it, we must accept someone must be defeated. We cannot have everyone winning.
“But they only want to accept winning. If they lost, it must be fraud. As a result (of their refusal to admit defeat), democracy does not function well,” said Dr Mahathir.
‘BN fears crossover’
The former premier, who still remains influential in BN lynchpin Umno, also revealed that the government was now in a state of “constant fear” that several parliamentarians would crossover to Pakatan Rakyat.
“The government now is having a fever, they are shivering because very soon someone is going to buy a government backbencher,” said Mahathir.
“[Pakatan] tried this before, remember September 16 2008? 13 people were supposed to crossover and the ‘new government’ had already gathered in some place, wearing their coats and ties, all ready to be sworn in.
“But they had to wait quite a long time, because the crossover didn’t take place,” he quipped.
Mahathir said Pakatan needed to buy over only 22 MPs to form the next government, and this was why the current government was not strong enough to “act firmly”.
“If the government acts, some people might crossover. So that is the problem faced by the government now.”
But he urged BN to remain strong and disregard pressure from the opposition coalition.
“We need a strong government that can implement difficult, unpleasant laws and policies. Unpleasant, but necessary,” he said.
