KUALA PUMPUR — Mr Muhyiddin Yassin is a dictator for declaring an emergency to remain in power, said Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The former Malaysian Prime Minister said his successor is desperate to cling on to power and had to resort to an emergency to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, despite already implementing a movement-control order (MCO).

“We are sacrificing democracy to give him (Mr Muhyiddin) full power to do what he likes. He is in that sense a dictator.

“It is a kind of dictatorship where people cannot protest and we are doing away with democracy completely by using an emergency to give Muhyiddin full power,” Dr Mahathir told radio station BFM on Friday (Jan 15) morning.

The Pejuang chairman said there is no need to declare an emergency as Malaysia has enough laws to deal with the pandemic and things are not unruly as in some other countries.

“The government has enough power to deal with Covid-19, we are not like other counties where people are protesting against the government instructions. In Malaysia, no, anything that the government says we do,” Dr Mahathir said.

The Langkawi MP said that despite the absolute power, Mr Muhyiddin is not doing enough to help the people survive the pandemic.

“He is not doing much in terms of running the country. The economy is going down and people are suffering from the action that has been taken. The MCO means a lot of people have no income and a lot of people have no food,” he said.

The 96-year-old said that if he were in a position of power, he would have instead increased the allocations to combat the pandemic, including building new hospitals as the healthcare system is already overstretched.

“The allocation for dealing with Covid-19 was very small. We need to have more allocations. We need to have more hospitals, the hospitals are already full. In England, a hospital was built in only nine days,” Dr Mahathir said.

The Yang di-Pertuan Agong on Tuesday assented to Putrajaya’s request to declare a state of emergency until Aug 1.

The state of emergency suspends Parliament and state assemblies until August and ultimately gives Mr Muhyiddin and his cabinet absolute power for the time being.

This came a day after the Perikatan Nasional government announced MCO for six states – Penang, Selangor, Federal Territories (Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan), Malacca, Johor and Sabah – from Jan 13 to 26.

The conditional MCO is being enforced in Pahang, Perak, Negri Sembilan, Kedah, Terengganu and Kelantan while Perlis and Sarawak, which have the fewest active Covid-19 cases currently, will remain in the recovery MCO phase. THE MALAYSIAN INSIGHT