Did Muhyiddin truly have 115 seats at the conclusion of GE 15?

If 10 BN MPs supported Muhyiddin as the next PM, but the leaders of their party and coalition didn’t, does it mean that their support can be counted as valid? If the question is asked today, the answer will likely be a yes

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

In the ongoing brouhaha about whether Muhyiddin did or did not have 115 MP’s supporting him to be the next PM after the conclusion of GE 15, another person in the form of Umno Supreme Council member Puad Zarkashi has thrown in his lot to state that Muhyiddin did not in fact have the numbers that he claimed he had.

Despite receiving pressure from both the police and the Pahang palace over his statement, Muhyiddin has refused to retract or qualify his statement , and instead decided to double down on his claim, by insisting that whatever he said about the subject on the campaign trail of the recently concluded Nenggiri by-election was a fact.

“I would like to emphasise that my speech in Nenggiri was a factual statement that was not intended to insult the institution of the monarchy or contain any seditious tendency.

“I believe that my remark did not violate any national laws. I will fully cooperate with the police to clarify the facts related to my remark,” Muhyiddin remarked.

Responding to the Bersatu president’s insistence, Puad Zarkashi retorted: “If it’s a fact, I challenge Muhyiddin to reveal the names of the MPs that he alleges supported him to be the 10th prime minister.”

I for one, do believe that Muhyiddin did indeed have the 115 seats as he claims, not only because I tend to believe that Muhyiddin is mostly an honest person – or at least as honest as politician can possibly be – but also because it is a matter of public record that Muhyiddin had at least 113 of the 115 seats that he claims he had.

As we all know, at the conclusion of GE 15, Pakatan had 81 seats, Perikatan had 74 while GPS of Sarawak had 23.

We also know that at the time,  there were 10 BN MPs who had thrown their support behind Muhyiddin to become PM, because Umno President Zahid Hamidi himself is on record for saying so a couple of months later, in January 2023.

By Zahid’s own admission, of the 30 MPs that BN had at the conclusion of GE15, 10 MPs –  six from Umno and the remaining four from BN component parties – had indeed signed SDs in favour of Muhyiddin as PM, because he claimed that he had forgiven them for their action and had instructed the 10 MPs to revoke their statutory declarations (SD) backing PN chairman Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

W also know as a matter of public record that  Muhyiddin had also persuaded GPS and GRS with its 24 and 6 MPs to back Muhyiddin as PM, because immediately after the conclusion of GE 15, the Chairperson of GPS,  Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg, had publicly announced GPS, as well as Barisan Nasional (BN) and Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) were backing Muhyiddin .

Adding PN’s, GPS’s, GRS and 10 of BN’s MPs together would have given Muhyiddin 113 seats.

Muhyiddin claims that he had 115 seats, and although I don’t know where the additional two seats came from – they probably came from the 8 seats that were won by minor parties or independent candidates that also contested in the GE15 – I will give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he probably did have the 115 seats that he claims he had.

In any case, Deputy Prime Minister Dato Sri Fadillah Yusof had confirmed in an interview with MalaysiaKini that Muhyiddin had  in fact submitted SDs with the names of 115 MPs to the Istana Negara.

Either way, just  the 113 seats that he publicly and officially had by itself is one seat more than the 112 minimum required to form the new government.

Now, if all of the above is a matter of public record, and confirms that Muhyiddin did have 113 or 115 MP’s supporting his candidacy as the next PM of Malaysia, at the conclusion of GE 15 , then why is it that Puad Zarkashi of Umno so daringly challenging Muhyiddin to reveal the names of the MPs from BN that Muhyiddin claims supported his candidacy as the PM?

Well, I suppose the reason Puad Zarkashi is saying that is because although Muhyiddin had 115 SD’s to support his claim, there are some doubts about the validity of some of his SDs, particularly the SD’s that came from the 10 BN MP’s, because the decision of the 10 BN MPs were likely not endorsed by the BN’s top brass.

If 10 BN MPs supported Muhyiddin as the next PM, but the leaders of their party and coalition didn’t, does it mean that their support can be counted as valid?

If the question is asked today, the answer will likely be a yes, considering that there is a precedent that has been set by the  6 rebel Bersatu MPs, who have been allowed to  to support Anwar as their PM, although their action is opposed by Bersatu’s top brass.

But at that time however, the fact that the leadership of BN and Umno did not support the 10 BN MPs’ decision to support Muhyiddin, was deemed to have made their support for Muhyiddin invalid, which in turn caused Muhyiddin’s request to form the next government to be denied, on account of having insufficient numbers.

So to the question, did Muhyiddin have the support of 115 MPs at the conclusion of GE 15, the answer is yes.

If it is then asked, if so, why didn’t Muhyiddin form the next government, the answer will be because the validity of 10 of the 115 SDs he had was called into question.

If it is then asked, was it fair to question the validity of the 10 SDs, this is where things will start to become murkier, complicated, bewildering and fuzzy.

The best way to answer that question will perhaps be : Depends on who you ask.

I received a mail from Raja Petra of Malaysia Today which indicated that Raja Petra believes that it is fair to question the validity of the 10 SDs.

If you ask me however, I think that the 10 SDs were valid.

Personally, I think even if you ask 100 objective and neutral judges this question, it is likely that 50 will say aye and 50 will say nay.

All in all, I think that whoever that had to answer this question decisively at the time, will inevitably find themselves put in a “damned if you do, damned if don’t” position.

P/S: On second thought, while it is true that I received a mail from the editor of Malaysia Today about the subject, I can’t be sure if it is Raja Petra that replied. For all you know, maybe Malaysia Today has more than one editor.