Kit Siang willing to work with Dr M to form ‘Save Malaysia’ coalition

(The Rakyat Post) – Politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows.

DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang today said he was willing to work with his arch nemesis, former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to form his proposed “Save Malaysia” coalition.

The coalition, which Lim mooted recently, would see lawmakers from both sides “defend constitutionalism and rule of law with a new Prime Minister” in a post-Barisan Nasional and post Pakatan Rakyat era.

The proposal for a new coalition came about after PAS — a PR component party — pushed for the implementation of hudud in Kelantan. DAP has opposed the syariah-based law from the very beginning.

Interestingly, neither is Dr Mahathir in favour of it.

“For this formidable task, we must be prepared to put our differences in the past to one side and concentrate all our energies on one common agenda, to save Malaysia from all centrifugal forces to tear the country asunder,” the Gelang Patah Member of Parliament said in a statement this evening.

The focus, he explained, was to rescue the nation from the present “roller-coaster policies” which he said threatened to plunge Malaysia down when it came to nation-building, politics, economics, and education among others.

Lim’s willingness to work with Dr Mahathir – of whom he has been at odds for ages – comes just after former minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim suggested the elderly statesman to team up with his former Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Zaid had proposed that Mahathir and Anwar work with Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah to remove Datuk Seri Najib Razak as the Prime Minister.

While Dr Mahathir had in the past sacked Anwar his one time protégé over corruption and sodomy allegations, the duo find themselves on the same page in their criticisms of Najib.

On a related matter, Lim said one of the top agendas of the “Save Malaysia” would be the release of Anwar from the Sungai Buloh prison to be back in the mainstream of Malaysian politics.

Anwar is currently serving a five-year jail term for sodomising his former aide in 2008.