PAKATAN Harapan’s agreement on Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad handing over power to Anwar Ibrahim does not stipulate a time period of two years, the coalition’s youth chief Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman said.

Urging PKR veteran Syed Husin Ali to stop attacking Dr Mahathir for allegedly failing to honour the succession plan, Syed Saddiq said the prime minister had already promised repeatedly that he would do so before the next general election.

“I was the sole Youth representative in the PH presidential council, specifically when this agreement was signed. The ‘two year’ transition for (Dr Mahathir’s) resignation is not stated at all in the document that we signed,” said Syed Saddiq, who is a member of the coalition’s presidential council and head of PH Youth and of Bersatu Youth.

“If it wasn’t stated, why try to lie to the public? Why force Dr Mahathir to resign now when this was never agreed by us? Was Syed Husin Ali in these discussions? Maybe he knows more than all of us who are in the PH presidential council,” the youth and sports minister said in a statement on his social media today.

In the last two days, Syed Husin, who was former PKR deputy president in the party’s early years, has issued statements pushing for Dr Mahathir’s resignation and hand over power to Anwar, the PKR president.

He said Anwar would be ineffective in leading PH in the next general election if the transition of power took longer than expected.

He also said the PH presidential council could remove the nonagenarian leader as prime minister as his party Bersatu is one of the smaller parties in the coalition.

Syed Husin also said he does not trust Dr Mahathir to keep to the transition timeline.

The PKR veteran’s remarks came after Dr Mahathir said at a press conference in New York that he would be prime minister for “three years at the most”.

In June, he had also told CNBC in an interview that he would not “go beyond three years”.

The handover timeline was widely reported as two years soon after PH won federal power in the general election last year.

Syed Saddiq today reminded Syed Husin that Dr Mahathir had already promised several times in media interviews that he would hand over to Anwar before the current term expired.

“To continue these attacks creates the perception that there are those who want to cause chaos in the country so as to force Dr Mahathir to resign. 

“The people want reforms and improvements, they are not obsessed with the transition nor with struggle for power. This obsession over the transition and the excessive politicking will destroy the government’s focus on bringing reforms and economic recovery,” he said. – September 30, 2019.