Instead, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) chairman who headed the government from 1981 to 2003 blamed then attorney-general (AG) Abu Talib Othman for the crisis.
“The AG at that time used my name, to show that it was my instruction. I did not interfere at all. I only found out later that he said I had instructed,” the former prime minister told reporters at the Perdana Leadership Foundation here today.
Dr Mahathir said he was prepared to take an oath upon the Quran to prove he was telling the truth.
Mahathir’s conflict with top members of the judiciary took place months after the 1987 High Court declaration that Umno was illegal, following a suit filed by members alligned to Mahathir’s rival Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who had just lost the party presidency by a razor thin majority.
The following year, Mahathir tabled a bill to amend Articles 121 and 145 of the Constitution, which critics of the government still maintain was an assault on the independence of the judiciary.
Salleh had then led other senior judges to petition the Agong. He was later impeached after a tribunal.
But Mahathir repeated a claim he made two years ago, that the Agong at that time, Sultan Iskandar Sultan Ismail of Johor, was angered by Salleh’s letter complaining about noise from renovations at the sultan’s private residence in Kuala Lumpur.
“Salleh Abas lived near the king’s residence.
“But as a senior officer, he must meet the king himself. He not only wrote a letter, but he copied the letter to the other rulers, ” said Mahathir.
He said the sultan then “asked me to sack him”.
“But I said we cannot simply sack him. To sack him, we can only do it through a tribunal,” he said, adding that the Agong agreed to this proposal.
Mahathir said he had shown the letter to his Cabinet members then, who agreed for a tribunal.
“But today, the letter cannot be found,” he added.
“I am only doing things that only the king can legitimise. I cannot do it on my own.”
A similar claim by Mahathir in 2015 was contested by a Johor prince.
“Mahathir, please don’t blame people who can’t defend themselves anymore,” said Tunku Abdul Majid Iskandar, a son of the late sultan, had written then.
Mahathir’s explanation today comes four days after he said PH would restore the independence of the judiciary.
“The separation of powers between the executive, legislature (Parliament) and judiciary will be restored,” he said in his speech at the PPBM general assembly last weekend.
“We will also ensure that the government, especially the prime minister, will not be able to control the judiciary.”