SERDANG, April 11 — Alleged plans to topple the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government will fail as the coalition was democratically chosen by Malaysians, said Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
He said the conspirators could carry on with their scheming but these will still not succeed.
“There have been a lot of attempts now to make the rulers unhappy with the government... they single out the Statute of Rome and things like that.
“But it’s not going to succeed, it will fail. They can try as they like,” said Dr Mahathir when met by reporters after the launch of the Malaysia Autoshow 2019 at the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang (MAEPS), here today.
Dr Mahathir said that as Malaysia practises democracy, it would not be easy to simply “get rid of the government and substitute” it with another party.
“Unless of course we want to drop democracy and become a kleptocracy, you can become an autocracy,” he quipped.
Last Sunday, Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah said the Cabinet’s reversal of its ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was a political move in fear of a coup d’etat attempt, which would be instigated by the “deep state”.
He said it was possible for the issue to be manipulated to the extent that people would go to the street as they were moved by the “deep state”, which refers to a form of secret government or network that operates independently of a country’s political leadership for its own personal agenda.
Last Friday, Dr Mahathir had said critics of the Rome Statute wanted to trigger a row between the country’s monarchy and the new PH government, which had led to Putrajaya withdrawing from ratifying the treaty.
The Langkawi MP said the federal government decided to not recognise the Rome Statute as there were some confusion by the rulers on the signing of the international treaty.
