Lavish lifestyle of PM, wife target of Dr M
PETALING JAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak and his wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor’s “lavish lifestyle” was the target of former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s barbs.
“There are many things about his (Najib’s) personal behaviour that I thought were not right. But I was prepared to overlook them, including he and his wife’s lavish lifestyle,” Mahathir wrote in his blog Chedet yesterday.
“But when he cannot explain where billions of ringgit have gone to and his involvement with questionable people in the management of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), I feel that he is not fit to be the prime minister of this country. I will explain about how he lost billions of ringgit in my next blog,” the Malaysian Insider quoted him as saying.
For some reason, Mahathir’s blog has been inaccessible since yesterday afternoon.
In his latest posting, he denied he was upset about the government’s failure to build the “crooked bridge” between Johor and Singapore.
“I am not so frivolous. Yes, I am disappointed, especially as Najib appealed to the Singapore PM to build a bridge and the latter rejected it. It is shameful that we dare not build a bridge in our own land without approval by Singapore,” wrote Mahathir, adding that it was not enough for him to ask Najib to step down.
“Najib is the son of Tun Abdul Razak, the man responsible for my elevation to prime ministership. Partly for that reason and partly because Najib showed good performance when I was PM, I wanted Najib to be prime minister.
“And people know I worked hard at pressuring (Tun) Abdullah (Ahmad Badawi) to appoint him as deputy prime minister, so that he would become prime minister, when Abdullah left,” said Mahathir of his hand in Najib’s accession to power.
“But Najib failed in many areas after becoming PM. Apart from the bridge, he did not go ahead with the double tracking and electrification of the railway line from Johor Baru to Padang Besar, which had been agreed upon but was dropped by Abdullah,” he said.