KUALA LUMPUR: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad agrees that he cannot be both prime minister and education minister at the same time as that would clash with Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) election manifesto.
However, he said, he could assume the position of education minister if there was demand for him to do so.
Dr Mahathir affirmed that he wanted the portfolio. He stressed that he would have not announced that he was taking the post of education minister if he did not want it.
“That is the position of the (PH) manifesto. I cannot break it unless, of course, there is demand that I should take up the education portfolio,” he said in an interview uploaded on the Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) Facebook page.
Asked whether he could pass the position to his deputy, Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, he said it could not be done as she had already been given a ministry.
However, he stressed that the deputy prime minister was not subject to the same restrictions that he was.
He pointed out that it was customary in Malaysia for the prime minister and deputy prime minister to be in charge of the Defence and Home Affairs Ministries alternately.
“That’s why you see the prime minister taking the Defence Ministry and the deputy prime minister taking the Home Affairs Ministry. Sometimes we (also) change. But, now it’s different. Defence goes to Mat Sabu (president of Parti Amanah Negara) and Home Affairs goes to (Tan Sri) Muhyiddin (Yassin) (president of PPBM),” he added.
One of the key pledges in PH’s Buku Harapan manifesto, found on page 38 under the section ‘Pillar 2: Institutional and Political Reform’, and listed under ‘Promise 12: Limit the prime minister’s term of office and restructure the Prime Minister’s Department’ is: “The prime minister will not simultaneously hold other ministerial posts, especially the post of minister of finance.”
Gerakan and MCA leaders had drawn attention to Dr Mahathir’s dual-minister role and said PH appeared to be back-pedalling on its election pledges.