[caption id="attachment_205056" align="aligncenter" width="900"]
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad attends the Doha Forum 2019 at the Sheraton Grand Doha Resort and Convention Hotel in Doha, Qatar, on December 14, 2019. — Picture by PATRICK BAZ/DOHA FORUM 2019/AFP-Services[/caption]
DOHA, Dec 15 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has reiterated that he would step down as the prime minister after resolving problems left by the previous government.
"I have promised I will step down once I resolved some of the major problems that have been left behind by the previous government.
"I will give the leadership to a candidate that has been named by the coalition (Pakatan Harapan)," he said in a live interview with Al Jazeera at the Doha Forum 2019, here Saturday.
Elaborating further, the prime minister said he had bad experiences with his successors when he stepped down as the fourth prime minister in 2003.
"I have named my successors and (then) they took over and did different things," said Dr Mahathir.
When asked whether he would step down after 2020, Dr Mahathir asserted that he would do so only after fixing all the problems left by the previous government which were serious and could not be resolved overnight.
He said the government had been given a five-year mandate to achieve the objectives and it had achieved so much within the past one and a half years, including improving the country’s financial situation.
— Bernama
