Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad Resigns From Office - Here's What Led To It | Current Affairs Alert

Interview season is still on and the world continues to churn out current-affair issues every other day. You wake up every morning, pick up a newspaper, scan through the international news column wondering,  ‘what now?’ While reading the newspaper is a good practice, finding useful elements from a sea of information can sometimes become difficult. To help you in that department, we have gathered information on three major happenings that shook the world in 2019 and the beginning of 2020. These events might become a part of your next GD-PI-WAT topic. So, remember to pay extra attention to them. Today, we are going to focus on ‘The Resignation Of Malaysian PM’. Read to know more. 

Mr. Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia recently resigned from office at the age of 94. It was a shocking turn of events, that too in the midst of the economic slowdown, political unrest and the aftermath of the infamous 1MDB (1Malaysia Development Berhad strategic development company) scandal. But before we understand the end, let’s start with the beginning.

How Did Mahathir Mohamad came into power?

• Before Mahathir, Mr Najib Razak was the Prime Minister, who is currently on trial for embezzlement of millions of dollars from the government wealth fund (this scandal is related to the 1MDB scandal).
• Mr Najib Razak was part of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), a party Mr Mahathir previously worked for. 
• Just around the trial, Mahathir formed a party called Bersatu and formed a coalition with Anwar Ibrahim (previously jailed for sodomy) and secured a win in the 2018 election.
• It was decided that once Mahathir takes over the office, the power will slowly be transferred to Mahathir’s designated successor, Anwar Ibrahim.

Why the sudden resignation?

• According to the Prime Minister's office, Mahathir Mohamad’s letter of resignation was submitted to the king and was submitted at 13:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on 23rd February 2020. 
• There is no public statement that clarifies why Mahathir resigned. Hence, we are stuck to the most obvious speculation: “No to PM Anwar”. 
• Rumours say that the Bersatu party was trying to form a new government and throw Anwar out of the line of succession. 
• However, before the resignation, Bersatu (Mahathir’s party) confirmed that Mahathir has pulled out of the four-party coalition. 
• While some believe that Mahathir Mohamad’s resignation was a resignation to politics, others say it’s all a part of nonagenarian onetime autocrat’s elaborate plan. 
• If rumours are to be believed, the event will reignite a decades-old feud with 72-year-old Anwar. The pair were Malaysia's top two leaders during Mahathir's first stint as PM but fell out politically.

What’s happening now?

Less than a week of his resignation, Mahathir Mohamad announced that he will stand again as Malaysian Prime Minister on behalf of the former ruling coalition. This time, without Anwar’s succession. This has happened because the nation’s ethnic Malay voters, who helped Mahathir win the historic 2018 election, were being swayed back to UNMO (dominant party of the previous ruling coalition) because of Anwar’s ‘sodomy’ past. If Umno came into power, the hope of reforming Malaysia's notoriously corrupt and patronage-driven politics will go down.