Everything About the Sacking of Dr Mahathir From Bersatu Simplified for You

On 28 May 2020, Dr Mahathir – that’s the former Malaysia Prime Minister and also the former Malaysia Prime Minister – and four other MPs had been sacked from Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu).

By now you’re probably confused. What? I thought he resigned as Prime Minister, why is he sacked now?

Now, politics in TV shows can often be simplified into a graphical representation of some kind (Game of Thrones spoiler in the link). But in real life, politics is a bit more like this:

Reader: That’s just a bunch of scribbles.

Exactly. But first, this article has homework for you: you need to read this article “Everything About the Mahathir’s Resignation Explained in Simple Terms That a 5YO Can Understand” before anything else.

Otherwise, this will be like watching Season 4 of House of Cards without watching the previous seasons.

Done? Good.

Who Is Bersatu? Why Is Bersatu?

To understand why Mahathir getting sacked comes as a shock, you’d also need to know that Mahathir was the founder of Bersatu. And Malaysia’s new Prime Minister since 1 March 2020 Muhyiddin Yassin? He’s the president of Bersatu and also a founding member.

You see, Muhyiddin was was deputy president of UMNO, and was deputy prime minister from 2009 to 2015 under the sixth prime minister Najib Razak. Muhyiddin criticised Najib for allegedly being involved in 1MDB and then got fired.

Mahathir also criticised Najib, and then left UMNO. Together with Muhyiddin, they formed Bersatu in 2016 in order to challenge UMNO and pushed Najib out.

And from the results of the 2018 elections, they succeeded. To do so, they had to form a larger coalition with other parties, including People’s Justice Party (PKR), to form Pakatan Harapan (PH). Then Mahathir became Prime Minister.

So it seems like the M & M should be buddy-buddy right?

Nope.

Split In Alliance Decisions

Initially, the plan for Mahathir’s resignation was to hand over the position of Prime Minister to Anwar Ibrahim in PKR (also part of PH), who helped them win the election in 2018.

But earlier in 2020, different political parties (including the ones not introduced in this article) started talking to each other about forming new government coalitions.

Suddenly, Bersatu said they wanted to leave PH and work together with Barisan Nasional (BN) and Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS).

Remember UMNO? Well UMNO is part of the coalition BN, the previous Government of Malaysia, and Mahathir doesn’t want to work with them since they were involved in alleged corruption.

Leading To Mahathir’s Resignation

So he resigned on 24 Feb 2020 to oppose Bersatu’s decision to join with BN and PAS.

“I thought that the decision for Bersatu to leave PH did not have a good basis. I had good support from Pakatan Harapan, During the Presidential Council meeting … they decided to give me full autonomy to decide when I should resign (to make way for Mr Anwar Ibrahim),” Dr Mahathir had then said.

As you probably expect at this point, Muhyiddin didn’t approve of this.

“But he (Mr Muhyiddin) believed that we needed to leave PH on the same day. (He said) if we didn’t leave, the Malays will be destroyed. They will be destroyed by (the Democratic Action Party) DAP.”

Then Bersatu Rejected Mahathir’s Resignation

Yep. They did that. So Mahathir was appointed Interim Prime Minister. That is until a new prime minister is picked.

Which happened to be Muhyiddin with support from UMNO, PAS, Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC).

He then told Malaysians to stay at home because MCO then came, and everyone forgot about House Of Cards Season 4 in Malaysia.

Mahathir Doesn’t Support Muhyiddin as Prime Minister

When Muhyiddin was appointed Prime Minister, Mahathir immediately said that Muhyiddin is an illegitimate Prime Minister, since he did not prove that he had majority support.

“I don’t think Muhyiddin’s appointment is legitimate. When he took his oath of office, he swore he has the majority support. I want to know if this is true and the House can determine if at the material time he swore the oath, did he have the majority support?”

And then Mahathir says that he himself has the backing of 114 MPs, out of 222-strong parliament.

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Mahathir pointed that out that on 18 May, it seemed like there should have been time to prove this since the Dewan Rakyat ended immediately with no debate scheduled for the remainder of the day.

But it did end, and it was said that Muhyiddin decided this due to efforts to contain COVID-19.

And then suddenly…

Mahathir and 4 Other MPs Removed From Bersatu For… Not Seating Together With Own Party

Yesterday (28 May), it was suddenly on the news that Mahathir, his son Mukhriz, Bersatu youth chief Syed Saddiq, Datuk Amiruddin Hamzah and Dr Maszlee Malik (all MPs) were sacked from Bersatu.

The reason? During Parliament sitting on 18 May 2020, they didn’t sit together with their politician friends.

As much as this sounds like going back to primary school friendship dynamics, I’m not kidding. Here’s the relevant portion:

“Through the notice dated May 15, YB Tun informed that his sitting position in Parliament was at the block that is not supporting the Perikatan Nasional government led by the Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who is the Bersatu president and acting chairman.

“In the Parliament session on May 18, YB Tun also joined and sat at the opposition bloc. Therefore, it is informed that through clauses 10.2.2 and 10.2.3 of the Bersatu party constitution, YB Tun’s membership in Bersatu is ceased immediately.”

(YB Tun refers to Mahathir)

Clause 10.2.2 and 10.2.3 of the Bersatu Constitution states that the membership of a party member is forfeited if it fails to comply with party rules, including joining other party affiliations.

To make things even more confusing, Bersatu supreme councillor Wan Saiful Wan Jan said that the five MPs were technically not sacked.

“The five MPs were not sacked but their membership was automatically nullified when they crossed the benches. There is no party on earth that will allow their MPs to sit on a different bench as the rest of the party.”

Seems like a play on words. But ok.

All Five Of Them Rejected It

All of them said they were acting within the laws and regulations set by Bersatu in a joint statement.

“We do not accept these wrongful dismissals as they are clearly against the law and strip away our right to act … not just for ourselves but for all grassroots members of Bersatu,” the statement said.

And then claimed that this was orchestrated by Muhyiddin.

“Clearly, the president’s office is playing politics while the country is facing the COVID-19 issue and the economy is in turmoil. This reflects the president’s dictatorship stance.”

“We would like to add that the unilateral move by Bersatu’s president in sacking us without cause is because he is worried about the upcoming party polls and the fact that his position as prime minister is the most tenuous in Malaysia’s history.”

And like anything political, there are others who support them.

Now, you’d be thinking: how confused should I be? How much should I be understanding all the political alliances, backstabbings and intricacies?

After all, this article is mostly from the point of view of Mahathir and we haven’t even talked about any of the other characters, like Anwar, who was previously promised to be the next Prime Minister.

Well, just take it in stride like Najib:

(Caption roughly translates to: I heard someone was fired?)

Oh yes, it could have all been just a translation error after all.

By the way, this isn’t the first time Najib has posted himself eating Super Ring. The former prime minister, who’s extremely active in Facebook, has also posted influencer-like image of him having Super Ring back in March:

Interesting.