Malaysia leader Muhyiddin Yassin back on the ropes

Malaysia’s so-called back door government is teetering on the edge of collapse, three months after a parliamentary coup.

Najib Razak, centre, arrives at court in Kuala Lumpur on Friday. Picture: AP

Malaysia’s so-called backdoor government is teetering on the edge of collapse, three months after Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin led a parliamentary coup that ended the ruling coalition of his former political ally Mahathir Mohamad.

Mr Muhyiddin’s always tentative hold on power looked increasingly shaky on Friday after a deputy minister resigned from cabinet, declaring he had made a “mistake” by defecting from the Mahathir-led Pakatan Harapan government with Mr Muhyiddin and other MPs to form a new coalition with the graft-tainted opposition United Malays National Organisation party.

The statement by former deputy works minister Shahruddin Mohammad Salleh late on Thursday came after he reportedly met Dr Mahathir, whose Bersatu party was split into two by the defections in February.

At least two other defectors from Bersatu, which Dr Mahathir formed with Mr Muhyiddin in 2016, were also rumoured to be on the verge of quitting, Malaysian media reported on Friday.

Should all three do so, Mr Muhyiddin is likely to no longer have the majority parliamentary support required to remain in government.

Political analyst Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at Singapore’s Rajaratne School of International Relations, said there was now intense jockeying to secure the 112 or more seats required to form government and the odds of the administration holding onto power were no better than 50/50.

“I think it is a very close call now and it could only take one or three people switching sides to see a fall of government,” Dr Oh told The Weekend Australian.

“Everybody is hedging their bets and playing both sides and that includes Mahathir, Anwar Ibrahim to a lesser extent, and also Muhyiddin.”

“If you talk to (Mahathir’s) Pakatan Harapan side, they’re sounding very confident. If they can pull together a majority of five to 10 seats then they could convincingly go to the king without even having to put it to parliament.”

Dr Mahathir was poised last month to table a vote of no confidence in parliament against Mr Muhyiddin but the vote was foiled by the government’s last-minute move to restrict a special one-day sitting of parliament to just 45 minutes in which only the king spoke.

Mr Muhyiddin has since delayed the next parliamentary session until next month and begun liberally distributing key government positions to UMNO MPs to buy loyalty.

But Dr Mahathir is not the only threat to Muhyiddin’s leadership.

UMNO has refused to commit to a formal alliance and this week signalled its readiness for an early election, which party leaders have said they expect to win without Mr Muhyiddin’s Bersatu.

UMNO president Zahid Hamidi, who along with former prime minister Najib Razak is facing corruption charges related to the $4.5 billion 1Malaysia Development Berhad misappropriation scandal, said on Tuesday the party was united and ready for the polls.

UMNO ruled Malaysia for more than 60 years before its 2018 shock election loss to a coalition led by Dr Mahathir and his former political nemesis Anwar Ibrahim. The Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) government pushed through some important reforms in its 21 months in power that restored independence to key government bodies.

But the decades-long rivalry between Dr Mahathir and Mr Anwar was eventually its undoing and the alliance fractured over the timeline for a transition of power between the two men.

That issue has not gone away, with many questioning whether Dr Mahathir would be prepared to step aside for Mr Anwar and play a “minister mentor” role similar to that of Singapore’s late Lee Kuan Yew after he stepped down as PM in 2004.

Both Mr Muhyiddin and Dr Mahathir are eager to dodge early polls which most pundits predict would restore UMNO to power and potentially deliver Mr Razak the immunity from prosecution he craves.

“The opportunity is there (to topple the government) but we have to be very, very mindful of the timing. There is a lot of criticism against politicking at this time,” a close aide to Dr Mahathir told The Weekend Australian, adding an election would be costly and risky during the pandemic.