00:00Former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad says Amno became fragmented after his retirement in 2003,
00:07causing Malay political support to splinter across multiple parties.
00:11In an exclusive interview with FMT, Mahathir said that during his tenure,
00:15Amno had all the Malays, in stark contrast to the party's fragmented support today.
00:20In other words, there was already Malay unity.
00:24So the Malay unity gives them strength and they won.
00:28The election, they won the election and there is no dispute as to who is going to lead the party,
00:36who will succeed the leader if he steps down.
00:40However, Mahathir said that after he stepped down,
00:44Amno's fragmentation made it difficult to identify a single leader with full support,
00:48leading to continuous struggles for the premiership.
00:51But when I stepped down, the Amno members did not join one party.
00:57They joined many parties.
00:59So they broke themselves up into four or five parties.
01:04After I stepped down, there is always this struggle to become Prime Minister.
01:11It should be, if we follow the tradition, the Deputy Prime Minister will become the Prime Minister.
01:18But after I stepped down, everybody thinks that they can become Prime Minister.
01:25This shift, he added, forces leaders to work with multiple Malay parties to maintain support.
01:30The former leader's remarks come amid ongoing debate about the state of Malay political unity,
01:36with several splinter parties vying for influence in a landscape once dominated by Amno.
01:41Mahathir, who later led Versatu to Juang and the Garakan Tanah Ayer Coalition,
01:46recently formed a Malay secretariat committee to unite Malay interests under one big umbrella.
01:51Donny Chargeriza, FMT.
Comments