“You have seen the comments on social media, on Instagram, YouTube and others. Those are the comments of the citizens. I am also a citizen, I don’t want to comment further,” he said after a fund-raising lunch here.

Dr Mahatir said the criticism “will only make PH more popular”.

In a Facebook posting last night, Tunku Ismail, who is Tunku Mahkota Johor, made a veiled attack on Mahathir, who was making a tour of the state in preparation for the general election.

He said Johoreans should not be “fooled by a forked tongue individual”.

Without naming Mahathir, the prince said the former prime minister was responsible for stripping the powers of the Sultan, a reference to the constitutional amendments of the 1990s.

“Do not be easily manipulated into believing whatever you heard last night in Pasir Gudang,” he wrote, referring to the PH rally there.

“Johor state will never forget that individual who tried to disband the Johor Military Force, an organisation that has stood since 1886 and that same time, dreaming of diminishing the Sultan’s power, belittling our constitution that has been here since before the inception of the country called Malaysia.”

In 1992 Mahathir launched a campaign to remove the Malay rulers’ immunity under the law, following a controversy involving a hockey coach and the ruler, TMJ’s grandfather Sultan Iskandar Sultan Ismail.

The following year Parliament passed a constitutional amendment that removed legal immunity of the Malay rulers, allowing suits against them in their personal capacities to be filed at a special court.

Sultan Ibrahim is one of two Malay rulers who have openly criticised Mahathir, the other being the Sultan of Selangor, after the former premier made caustic remarks about prime minister Najib Razak’s Bugis ancestry. The two royal houses also have Bugis ancestors.

The Johor ruler is also unhappy with Mahathir’s opposition to the huge Forest City project on reclaimed land in the Straits of Johor.

Beware of ‘forked tongue’ man, says TMJ in veiled attack on Dr M