Anwar admits writing to King on Sept 16 takeover

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (picture) tonight admitted he wrote to the King on Sept 19, 2008 that he had majority support to form the federal government.

The Opposition Leader made the admission when interjecting during the winding-up of the Royal Address by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz at the Dewan Rakyat.

“On September 18, I had the agreement from three opposition leaders, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang and Lim Kit Siang to write to the Prime Minister for a special parliamentary sitting to discuss a motion of no-confidence towards him and his leadership,” Anwar told Parliament.

“It is impossible for me to be brave to write that letter if I had no agreement from other MPs and after the letter was rejected, I wrote to the Speaker and after that Tuanku Mizan,” he said, referring to the King, Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin.

Anwar’s revelation caused an uproar in the Dewan Rakyat as several MPs called it a lie.

But the Permatang Pauh MP did not name any of the BN MPs who had agreed to support the opposition pact then.

Nazri said Anwar would have sent the letter to the King if he succeeded to “attract” between 20 and 30 BN MPs through initial contacts.

“Anwar should have brought the signatures of the 20 or 30 people that he had attracted to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, but he didn’t. The Opposition had 82 and BN had 140, how to have a no-confidence vote,” he asked.

Nazri said allegations that many BN MPs wanted to jump to the opposition bench wasn’t true as the reverse happened and they became independent lawmakers.

He said the allegations that BN paid off the opposition MPs to join BN was baseless and the people could asses such lies after those lawmakers had made revelations against their former party.

He said BN did not have to steal MPs from the opposition bench as the ruling coalition had enough seats although it wasn’t a two-thirds majority.

Pakatan Rakyat now has 78 MPs while BN has 137 with five independent MPs and two from SAPP in the 222-seat Dewan Rakyat.

The Dewan Rakyat later approved the motion of thanks for the Royal Address.

courtesy of Malaysian Insider