Kit Siang: Art Harun ‘dead wrong’ about Muhyiddin

PETALING JAYA: Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Azhar Azizan Harun is “dead wrong” to say that Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin never asked for the prime minister’s post, says DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang.

“I should know because he asked for my support in a cloak-and-dagger meeting at Le Meridien Hotel in Kuala Lumpur in 2016.

“But I declined to do so because DAP was committed to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim being the prime minister,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Lim said Azhar – also known as Art Harun – took everyone by surprise when he called the Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia president “an overlooked reformist” during the launch of the book Muhyiddin Yassin: Leading a Nation in Unprecedented Crisis by Abdul Mutalib Razak.

Lim said Muhyiddin would forever be remembered for, among others, the infamous Sheraton Move, his illegal and unconstitutional declaration of a six-month Emergency, and his governance during the beginning of the more than two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He also said it was difficult to say that Muhyiddin’s political life was one of success, claiming that he had failed as an education minister and in the battle against corruption.

“Myth-makers claim that Muhyiddin’s government has passed its greatest test in the Covid-19 pandemic, but on the contrary, this is not the truth.

“We survived due to the hard work of frontliners and the public, who rallied behind the government.

“The exponential increase of Covid-19 cases and deaths after the Emergency was declared showed that the move was the wrong prescription and a gross abuse of executive power,” he added.

On Friday, Azhar said Muhyiddin became prime minister at a time when Malaysia was a cauldron of political manoeuvres that was unprecedented in history in terms of intensity and viciousness.

“Yet his first initiative was to take care of the people and the section of society that needed help the most.

“Great leaders make hard decisions not populist ones,” the Speaker said in his speech at the book launch.