Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has quit the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) party in protest over the leadership of his successor Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, his son said yesterday.
“Mahathir has resigned from UMNO in protest over Pak Lah’s continued leadership as both the prime minister and president of UMNO,” Mokhzani Mahathir said, referring to Abdullah by his nickname.
“He will also write a letter to the UMNO secretary-general to inform him of his resignation,” he said, adding that Mahathir announced his departure during a speech yesterday in Alor Star, the capital of his home state Kedah.
“He made it clear at the gathering at Alor Star that he is resigning in protest over the current leadership,” he said.
Mahathir ruled Malaysia and the dominant UMNO for 22 years until 2003 when he handed power over to Abdullah, his hand-picked successor.
However in recent times he has been a vocal critic of Abdullah’s administration and since disastrous March general elections, which produced the UMNO’s worst ever results, has actively campaigned for him to step down.
News Web site Malaysiakini quoted Mahathir as urging UMNO ministers and party leaders to follow him by quitting, and return only if Abdullah departs.
“I will only come back to the party when there is a change in leadership,” it quoted him as telling the Alor Star gathering.
“Wait till Abdullah quits as the prime minister and party president and then we can return to UMNO,” he reportedly said.
Shahrir Samad, a Cabinet minister and senior UMNO member, said Mahathir’s surprise move could trigger a flurry of resignations that could force Abdullah to hold fresh general elections.
“By Tun doing this it could cause a situation where many other UMNO lawmakers might resign,” he said, using Mahathir’s honorific title. “If this happens then the government has no choice but to form a new government or call a fresh general election.”
“Certainly it is not helpful or constructive to the struggle of UMNO right now,” he said, as the party fends off a challenge from opposition figurehead Anwar Ibrahim who says he could soon seize power with the help of defectors.
Shahrir said that while Anwar was threatening to snatch lawmakers from the smaller parties with which the UMNO rules in coalition, Mahathir could chip away at the ranks of the ruling party itself.
“This will be a reduction of the number of UMNO lawmakers, which is the ruling party of the present government,” he said. “I suppose it is Mahathir’s way of trying to force a call for a referendum from the grass roots.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion