KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 23 — Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said he will remain on the sidelines, observing PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s next moves after the latter claimed to have enough support from MPs in the Dewan Rakyat to form a new government.

The Edge Singapore reported Dr Mahathir as saying this is not the first instance the Port Dickson MP has claimed to have majority parliamentary support and would make an important announcement, adding that something similar occurred in September 2008.

"We will have to wait to see if this is another episode of making claims that cannot be substantiated,” he said while speaking live at Nutanix’s Asean CIO Virtual Summit via Zoom.

During the conference, the Langkawi MP stressed that his resignation on February 24, which led to the fall of the Pakatan Harapan government within 24 hours, was not his decision.

"I did not want to resign as prime minister, but when my party pulled out from the coalition, the coalition fell and so I ceased to be the prime minister. So these things happen without me initiating anything by my own.

"Now I have to handle this problem, not finishing my term, not being able to implement all the ideas that I have for recovery. That is very disruptive in many ways,” Dr Mahathir said.

He said he sought to change things in Malaysia, but he was disrupted, and this also caused a disruption to a lot of people.

"Things were not going well in Malaysia for some time because we have a problem with a leader who has not really focused on the work he has to do, so we had to move him out.

"Our country was doing well but it became concerned with a lot of wrong things being done. The correction will take a long time and you have to be very careful about what you do to correct all the mistakes that were done before,” Dr Mahathir said.

Earlier today, Anwar called for a press conference at the Le Meridien Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where he said he would seek an audience with the Yang di-Pertuan Agong soon as he has enough support from MPs to form a government.