Kuala Lumpur: Ninety- two -year -old Mahathir Mohamad was sworn in as Malaysia’s seventh prime minister following his stunning election victory over the coalition that has ruled the Southeast Asian nation for six decades since independence from Britain. Malaysia’s constitutional monarch, Sultan Muhammad V, administered the oath of office to Mahathir. the oldest elected leader in the world.
Hundreds of Malaysians were lined up on the road leading to the palace, waving party flags and cheering. The Election Commission announced the result long before dawn and there was some consternation in the capital over the time taken to swear in the new prime minister. “There is an urgency here, we need to form the government now,” Mahathir told a news conference earlier in the day.
A palace statement earlier dismissed suggestions that the appointment was delayed. “His Majesty strongly supports and respects the democratic process and the wishes of his subjects,” it said. Mahathir ruled Malaysia with an iron fist from 1981 to 2003. He came out of retirement to take on his former protege, Najib Razak, who was PM for nearly a decade. Mahathir’s alliance of four parties trounced Najib’s Barisan Nasional (BN), the first time it had ever lost an election.
Najib appeared to raise doubts that Mahathir would immediately take office because no single party had won a simple majority of seats in the 222-member parliament, and it would be up to the monarch to decide. Poll results showed that Mahathir’s coalition won 121 seats, comfortably more than the 112 required to rule. But it has not been formally registered as an alliance.
Najib’s BN coalition won 79 seats, a collapse from the 133 it won in the 2013 polls, which was itself the coalition’s worst poll performance ever at the time. Mahathir and Najib were once allies but they clashed over a scandal around 1Malaysia Development Berhad, a state fund from which billions of dollars were allegedly siphoned off. The 1MDB affair is being probed by at least six countries, although Najib has denied wrongdoing.
