KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 6 — Perikatan Nasional (PN) chairman Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has denied allegations his administration misused RM600 billion, and his coalition employed funds from gambling firms to fund its 15th general election campaign.

On Facebook, the former prime minister claimed his coalition was being targeted because of its popularity among Malay voters in GE15, which he said amounted to 62 per cent of the community’s votes.

Muhyiddin further claimed that both matters were being played up to deflect attention from the appointment of Umno president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as a deputy PM.

"I question how a government that is tainted with integrity issues can convince foreign investors to enter this country?

"I also answered some of the slander made by the PH-Umno government about the issue of RM600 billion spent during the Covid-19 pandemic and the use of gambling proceeds to finance the recent GE15 campaign.

"These two issues are deliberately designed to discredit PN after the people clearly rejected PH and Umno in the recent election,” he wrote in a post today.

Muhyiddin said that PN was not poor to the point that it would accept funds from any source, especially not from gambling companies.

"We have banned gambling premises in several states that we control, why would we want to take gambling money? By God, we will not do haram things like that!

"I challenge those making the slander to provide evidence and make a report to the authorities instead of just talking nonsense,” he said.

The claim that gambling funds might have been used for PN’s campaign emerged yesterday when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced that special draws for gaming operators would be slashed to just eight annually.

The Muhyiddin administration had raised the number of special draws to 22 per year.

Gambling is forbidden in Islam.

In his post, Muhyiddin also urged voters in the Padang Serai federal seat and Pulau Tioman state seat elections to choose his coalition.

The two elections were part of GE15 but had to be postponed after candidates died in each before voting period.