A REPORTER touched a raw nerve today when she asked Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad if  Pakatan Harapan would stifle the media.

Dr Mahathir was asked the question after he had just explained how media reportage had caused anger among the people and issues to be blown out of proportion, and that the government would engage more with the press to make sure it understood the issues.

“I am going to stifle all of you,” he said with his trademark sarcasm.

“‘Get out! Get out!’ – so I do that? How many times did you meet Najib Razak when he was PM?” he said after chairing the PH presidential council meeting in Kuala Lumpur today.

Comparing himself to his predecessor, the 94-year-old said he had never avoided the press even when it asked uncomfortable questions.

“I never run away from the press.”

Pressed on whether PH could assure the press of its freedom, Dr Mahathir said: “Do we have to assure you? We have already espoused media freedom many times in our manifesto and you are asking me to say it again?”

He added that the government was considering holding post-cabinet briefings again as practised by PH in its early days in federal power.

“We are considering (meeting the press after cabinet meetings). But did Najib meet you after every cabinet meeting?”

The PH government had conducted weekly press briefings in the first two months of taking over Putrajaya.

Dr Mahathir, who is PH chairman, added that PH would hold a retreat on October 5 and 6 and would  also to postpone the coalition’s annual general meeting to the end of the year. – August 30, 2019.