TWO years is a reasonable time frame for Dr Mahathir Mohamad to be prime minister and he should not stay beyond that, a study done by the Selangor government think tank Institute Darul Ehsan (IDE) found. 

IDE CEO Mohammad Redzuan Othman said the perception that people want Dr Mahathir to be allowed more time as prime minister isn’t true. 

“The majority of Malaysians felt that he should not hold the prime minister’s post for more than two years,” he said. 

Redzuan was one of the panellists discussing the Anwar PM Ke-8 book held in Shah Alam, Selangor, today. 

The study, titled Mood of the Nation, showed 75% of the respondents agreed that Dr Mahathir should not be prime minister for more than two years, while 22% said he should not step down.

Amongh the 75%, 44% of them said Dr Mahathir should relinquish his position within six months from now, 36% said he should not be in office for more than two years, while 20% wanted him to step down immediately.

However, 22% of respondents said there was no need at all for Dr Mahathir to step down as prime minister.

The IDE study was conducted in three days from June 28 to 30, involving 1,957 respondents in 222 parliamentary constituencies. 

In the same study, a majority of them chose Anwar as his successor. 

Answering the question on which Pakatan Harapan leader qualified to be the eight prime minister, 45% chose Anwar, while 16% named Muhyiddin Yassin. 

PKR deputy president Mohamed Azmin Ali, meanwhile, got 11% and was the respondents’ third best choice, the study revealed. 

“It was an open question. We give our respondents the liberty to choose anyone including those from the opposition,” said Redzuan. 

Former prime minister Najib Razak got 6%, Umno deputy president Mohamad Hasan and PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang each got 3% – much higher than other PH leaders such as Lim Guan Eng, Mohamad Sabu and Mukhriz Mahathir, who each got 1%.

Some 27% didn’t name any leaders in the list, but instead chose others. 

Meanwhile, Shahbudin Husin, who is the book’s author, said he wrote the book on the transition of the prime minister’s power because the topic was very much talked about a year ago. 

“We felt two years is enough. Although there are suggestions of asking for Dr Mahathir to stay on until the end of the term, his age would be 98 by then. 

“If we force him until he is 98, we are abusing him. We do not want PH to continue to be troubled by this problem,” he said.

Before the 14^th general election, PH had chosen Dr Mahathir to be the prime minister and Anwar, who was in jail at the time, was picked as his successor. 
Several PH leaders later said their earlier agreement did not specify the time frame for Dr Mahathir to hand over the position to Anwar. – July 17, 2019.