Malaysia’s former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin will be charged with sedition on Tuesday, police and his party have said, over alleged comments about the previous king’s appointment of Anwar Ibrahim instead of him after a tight 2022 general election.
Muhyiddin, who led Malaysia between 2020 and 2021, will be the country’s first former leader to be charged under the colonial era law, and faces a maximum fine of 5,000 ringgit (US$1,140), up to three years’ jail or both if found guilty.
He allegedly questioned then-king Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah’s decision to back Anwar for the prime minister’s office despite Muhyiddin claiming he had secured a simple parliamentary majority.
“[He will be brought] before the Gua Musang sessions court tomorrow,” Razali Idris, the communications chief of Muhyiddin’s Bersatu party, said in a brief text message to This Week in Asia, referring to a district in northern Kelantan state.
Malaysia’s police chief Razarudin Husain separately confirmed in a brief text message that Muhyiddin would be charged on Tuesday under Section 4(1) of the Sedition Act, for allegedly attempting or conspiring to act with seditious tendencies.
Last Wednesday, Muhyiddin was grilled by police at his office in Kuala Lumpur for the remarks made in early August on a campaign stop for his Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition in a by-election in Kelantan.
Muhyiddin reportedly said he “was not invited to the palace to be sworn in” by then-king Sultan Abdullah of Pahang “for whatever reason”, despite having secured what he claimed were official declarations of support from 115 out of the 222 parliamentarians.
The Malay nationalist PN that Muhyiddin leads had won 74 seats in the 2022 polls but argued that he was able to cobble together support from enough individual lawmakers from other parties to secure a simple majority.
Muhyiddin said last week that he had handed over to the police proof of the statutory declarations from MPs who backed his prime ministerial bid, and that his “loyalty to the institution of the constitutional monarch should not be questioned”.
Analysts have said Muhyiddin’s alleged criticism of the king’s choice of prime minister may have been a decisive factor in the recent by-election, as it rocked PN’s image as the bastion of ethnic Malay supremacy and Islam, where respect for the king is paramount.
PN, which was the incumbent, lost the seat to former ruling coalition Barisan Nasional – currently a key partner in Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration.
Last Monday, Pahang Crown Prince Tengku Hassanal Ibrahim Alam Shah accused Muhyiddin of insinuating that his father had unjustly appointed Anwar as prime minister and openly incited distrust in the Malay royal institution.
