Malaysia’s Mahathir says call for probe over Singapore island row a bid ‘to destroy me’
The ex-PM is also facing a corruption crackdown that he and his associates say is targeted at opponents of his former protégé Anwar Ibrahim
In its report released last week, a Royal Commission of Inquiry called for a probe into Mahathir for allegedly cheating the government into withdrawing a challenge against the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) decision to award Pedra Branca to Singapore over a decade ago.
On Tuesday, the combative Mahathir said the commission’s findings were politically motivated to “neutralise” him politically and paint him as a criminal.
“There must be somebody who has a special interest in my case … the whole idea is how to destroy me, call me treacherous and all that,” he told a news conference, in an apparent reference to comments by Anwar last week.
Anwar said on Friday that the RCI had exposed failures in defending the country’s sovereignty in the Pedra Branca case.
