SHAH ALAM: It is better to hand the mandate of governing the country back to the people if political parties continue to threaten to withdraw support for the Prime Minister, says Datuk Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki.

The Umno Youth chief said the country will not be stable if the political threats carried on.

“Many are confused by claims that the government today is a Umno/Barisan Nasional government since the Prime Minister is from Umno,” he said.

He explained that this was not the case as the government formed by Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob in August last year, after the collapse of Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s government, was inherently unstable because of “conditional support” given by Perikatan Nasional.

He said this “conditional” support put Perikatan in a position to destabilise the government.

“The country will not be stable and fail to gain the confidence and trust of the business community, let alone foreign investors if the government does not have the real mandate of the people and can change and be threatened at any time,” he said according to Sinar Harian.

He said this was why Umno Youth had from the beginning did not agree to form a “backdoor” a government without a general election.

“The fact is, this is not a Barisan/Umno government, but a coalition government or more accurately the Perikatan Nasional 2.0 or branded as the Keluarga Malaysia government.

He said that Perikatan had the most seats in Parliament with 53, while Barisan only had 41 seats including Umno’s 37.

“In such a situation, it is certainly not easy for a Prime Minister, who does not represent the largest party in the government, to determine a clear direction, let alone take bold action to introduce policies in the interest of the people if he is constantly threatened,” he said.