Mahathir Mohamad was sworn in as Malaysia's seventh prime minister on May 10 following his stunning election victory over the coalition that has ruled the Southeast Asian nation for six decades since independence from Britain.


Mr. Mahathir Mohamad was officially sworn in as Malaysia's seventh prime minister on May 10 by King Sultan Muhammad V.(Photo:Twitter/The Hindu)

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Malaysia's constitutional monarch, Sultan Muhammad V, administered the oath of office just before 10 p.m. (1400 GMT), in a ceremony carried live on state television from the palace.

Mahathir, 92, was dressed in a traditional black "baju melayu" tunic and sarong, with an Islamic cap on his head. He is the oldest elected leader in the world.

Hundreds of Malaysians were lined up on the road leading to the palace, waving party flags and cheering. The Election Commission announced the result long before dawn and there was some consternation in the capital over the time taken to swear in the new prime minister.

"There is an urgency here, we need to form the government now, today," Mahathir told a news conference earlier in the day, where he insisted that he would be sworn in on May 10.

Mahathir ruled Malaysia from 1981 to 2003. He came out of retirement to take on his former protege, Najib Razak, who was prime minister for nearly a decade.

Mahathir's alliance of four parties trounced Najib's Barisan Nasional (BN), the first time it had ever lost an election.

Official results showed that Mahathir's coalition won 121 seats, comfortably more than the 112 required to rule. But it has not been formally registered as an alliance.

Najib's BN coalition won 79 seats, a collapse from the 133 it won in the 2013 election, which was itself the coalition's worst poll performance ever at the time.

 

                     Source: NDO

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