Mahathir: Kit Siang turned down ministerial post in the 70s

(FMT) – Pakatan Harapan chairman says that if DAP leader had accepted Tun Abdul Razak’s offer for party to join BN, he would have become a minister.

Lim Kit Siang once rejected an offer to become a minister, says former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, as he rubbished talk of the DAP supremo eyeing the nation’s number one post.

The offer, according to Mahathir, came in the early 1970s when the late Tun Abdul Razak was prime minister, and DAP was offered the chance to join the then new Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, he said.

“Umno folks are so angry that I’m now good friends with Lim. They say if Umno falls, Lim will become the prime minister. But the fact is Lim could have been a minister.

“When Razak was forming BN he invited DAP, Gerakan and SUPP (Sarawak United Peoples’ Party).

“If Lim had wanted to become a minister, he would’ve joined. All those who joined got to be a minister. But he (Lim) didn’t even want to be a minister, what more a prime minister.”

Razak, who is current Prime Minister Najib Razak’s father, founded Barisan Nasional in 1973, to takeover from the previous ruling coalition, Alliance .

Mahathir was speaking for the first time as Pakatan Harapan chairman, to a crowd of around 1,000 people present at a ceramah here last night.