KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 3 — Former Pejuang deputy president Datuk Marzuki Yahya has strongly denied that former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is involved in a movement to topple the government dubbed ‘Dubai Move’.

Marzuki explained that it was impossible for Dr Mahathir to be involved in any confidential meeting with a handful of unity government MPs and Perikatan Nasional leaders in the UAE.

The former foreign minister added that this is because Dr Mahathir has not been abroad for the past few weeks.

Marzuki said, he regrets the behaviour of certain parties in the unity government who tried to associate Dr Mahathir with the Dubai Move speculation and described it as baseless.

"As for the Dubai Move, we don’t even know about it. If the movement is related to Tun, I can guarantee it is inaccurate and is an unfounded accusation.

"Over the past few weeks, Tun M has never been abroad. The last time he was away was last week when Tun M went to Langkawi,” Marzuki told Sinar Premium yesterday, referring to Dr Mahathir.

Deputy director-general of the Community Communications Department Datuk Ismail Yusop recently claimed that there is a secret plan to topple the government of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, involving an influential veteran political figure with the title of Tun.

Commenting further, Marzuki also described the speculation that the Dubai Move was deliberately exaggerated by the unity government in order to divert the people’s attention from the various issues the current government is facing.

According to him, if the alleged plot to topple the government was really drawn up by the Opposition coalition, they would not even need to hold a meeting in a location as far away as West Asia.

"If the government wants to fall, it doesn’t need the Dubai Move, the Mamak Shop Move is sufficient if the Opposition really wants to work on it.

"I wonder why the existing government does not really focus on solving urgent issues related to the interests of the people, especially involving the increase in the cost of living.

"Is it because of excessive suspicion of the Opposition and fear of losing the prime ministership that Datuk Seri Anwar is willing to use all government machinery to create a fairy tale to suppress the Opposition?” he said.