Mahathir says willing to forget 'betrayal' in working with PN but Muhyiddin refused

Gerakan Tanah Air (GTA) chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad yesterday said he had been willing to forget Muhyiddin Yassin's "betrayal" so that GTA and Perikatan Nasional (PN) could work together to face the 15th general election (GE15).

Mahathir said the opposition parties could only defeat Umno by working together, and for that reason, he had chosen to propose the matter to Muhyiddin but was rejected by the PN chairman.

"I thought, it is okay even though he had stabbed me in the back before, for the sake of our people, country, and religion, we are willing to humble ourselves to cooperate with Muhyiddin, even after he had betrayed me. I was willing to forget about it.

"But… he said he did not want to cooperate with anyone, how arrogant," he said at a GTA rally in Alor Setar last night.

The Pejuang chairman claimed that Muhyiddin was confident that PN could win GE15 without cooperating with any party, and was still interested in becoming prime minister for the second time.
 
Mahathir said GTA never refused to cooperate with any party to defeat Umno in GE15.

"I know people like to see opposition parties unite so that we can defeat Umno, but when we asked them to cooperate, they refused. We are ready, even in GTA we have four parties, we are united but they don’t want to (cooperate)," he said.

In the meantime, GTA deputy chairman Mukhriz Mahathir said the coalition aimed to contest about 120 parliamentary seats with the candidates to be announced on Nov 2.

He said the actual number of seats that GTA will contest would be finalised later, adding that it would field candidates in no less than 10 parliamentary seats in Kedah.