Mukhriz: No point having PM-Dr M meeting now

JOHOR BARU: A meeting now between Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his predecessor Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad will be futile, as old issues remain unresolved.
Dr Mahathir’s son, Datuk Mukhriz said he did not believe the meeting would be of any use as there were broken promises from the dialogue between the two in 2006.
Mukhriz said that after the meeting when his father had explained where the present Government had gone wrong, Pak Lah had immediately said he himself would address all the issues brought up.
“Shortly after that, Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz said Proton would answer issues concerning it, but at the end of the day, none of these issues were ever addressed,” he said.
Mukhriz said if the issues had been addressed at that point, perhaps the general election results would have been different.
According to him, the reason Barisan Nasional faced such heavy losses in the elections was because people were not encouraged to speak out, regardless of whether they were from the Opposition or within the party.
He said members were always instructed to say they supported or stood behind the leadership.
“Because of that, we have very quietly been losing support, ending up with those election results,” he said.
Mukhriz also said his father’s act of criticising the Government was not to benefit the Opposition, but to make Umno and Barisan realise where they had gone wrong and to show them how to remedy it.
On calls to Dr Mahathir to speak privately instead of airing his grievances through the media, Mukhriz said there had been a concerted effort to sideline his father.
“He has never been invited to the Umno supreme council and asked to speak his mind. As a retired statesman who has served for 22 years, you would think he’d be given the courtesy of voicing his opinion behind closed doors,” said Mukhriz.

tunku :i agrees that pak lah is an expired leader and no point having whatsoever meeting between the two