Pakatan Harapan will announce its candidate for Prime Minister at its convention this weekend, said the opposition coalition’s chairman, Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The former prime minister said PH would also announce at the convention seat allocations between its four parties, Bersatu, PKR, DAP and Amanah, for the next general election.

“We will announce it (the PM candidate) at the convention. Today is not the time to announce it,” Dr Mahathir said after a meeting of the coalition’s presidential council in Petaling Jaya today.

“We made the decision today to only announce our plans at the convention,” said Dr Mahathir, who is also Bersatu chairman. 

Dr Mahathir refused to divulge details on who the candidates are or details on seat allocations despite being pressed repeatedly by reporters.

He said if the announcements were made today, there would be no attraction to the convention.

“I will only tell you what we discussed today at the upcoming convention. The cooperation between parties will go on, we will meet every day, the committees will continue to meet.

“It’s not a boxing match, we are all good people,” said Dr Mahathir, a former prime minister.   

During a two-day PH retreat on December 1, DAP, Amanah and Bersatu had agreed to Dr Mahathir and Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail in being the interim prime minister and deputy prime minister respectively, if Putrajaya is won.

However, the full consensus has been delayed by PKR, who had wished to discuss the proposal internally before coming to a decision.

Last week, Bersatu president Muhyiddin Yassin said PH had no choice but to announce its prime minister’s candidate before GE14 as voters wanted to know who they were getting if they chose PH to take over Putrajaya.

Dr Mahathir also said he did not know of any conditions that had been set by PKR as a prerequisite for him to be named PH’s prime minister’s candidate.

“Thank you for that information. I have never heard of it and now I am hearing of it from you,” he told the press conference.

The Malaysian Insight had reported that PKR had set three conditions for Dr Mahathir to be named as prime minister candidate.

The first condition is that de facto PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim be immediately released from jail and installed as the prime minister within a year of PH coming into power.

The second is that PKR be allocated the most federal seats to contest in GE14. PKR wants around 60 seats in Peninsular Malaysia.

The third condition is for Dr Mahathir to agree to reform key institutions in the country.

In the same press conference, PH secretary Saifuddin Abdullah announced that the convention will take place on January 7 at the Ideal Convention Centre in Shah Alam.

It will be the first convention where all four parties will share the same stage. – January 4, 2018.