KUALA LUMPUR – Once again, Datuk Seri Najib Razak alleged that Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad pressured him several times, to grant projects to his cronies during Najib’s reign as the Prime Minister before withdrawing support and started to attack him.
In a reply to Dr Mahathir’s second letter, the sixth Prime Minister said that the pressure started at the end of October 2013 after his son, Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir lost the UMNO election.
“To show his anger, during the first day of PAU (UMNO General Assembly) 2013 and in December 2013, Dr Mahathir shockingly announced his resignation as the Advisor to Petronas with the excuse that he was too old.
“In less than three months, he was suddenly appointed as the Executive Chairman of Proton, that had already become a private company and no longer belonged to the government after Dr Mahathir requested for Khazanah to sell the full stakes of Proton in 2011.
“Among his main responsibility as the Executive Chairman of Proton was to ask for a free RM3 billion grant from the government,” Najib said in a Facebook post.
However, the amount of free grant awarded to Proton was RM1.7 billion.
Najib said, the Barisan Nasional government found it hard to give the free grant to Proton that had wholly become a private company.
Besides that, the then government thought that it would still be hard for Proton to be competitive despite the huge grant if it did not have new business partner and technology as the local market was too small.
“After the grant was rejected again, the fourth PM announced his withdrawal of support to me in August 2014.
“When he withdrew his support, he did not mention about SRC or 1MDB but more on my policies such as BR1M and minimum wage which hurt the country and local industry.
“I know that the main reason why he was very angry with me back then. He accused me of not supporting his son during the UMNO election in 2013 and embarrassed him after the government rejected his request as the Executive Chairman of Proton to provide free grant to Proton,” said Najib.
The Member of Parliament of Pekan also revealed that in 2014, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin saw the opportunity and started a conspiracy with Dr Mahathir and Mukhriz to topple him, as revealed by Mukhriz in the court. -MalaysiaGazette
