“It would be a disaster for Malaysia. The Malaysian people are wiser than to allow it,” Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad said in a statement today less than 48 hours to polling day.

He said Malaysians are faced with voting in a government led by Najib Razak with plans for the “economic well-being and security of Malaysia and its people”, or choose a “self-confessed dictator Dr Mahathir Mohamad”.

“He is a man obsessed by control, who thinks after 22 years in power that Malaysia can only be run by him, who demonised and jailed his opponents, muzzled the media and freedom of speech, seriously damaged the education system, created a class of crony capitalists, interfered in the electoral system, and bent the judiciary to his will by suspending the Supreme Court, sacking the senior judiciary when they didn’t agree with him and changing the constitution,” said Tengku Sariffuddin, referring to decades-old complaints by rights groups and activists against the former prime minister, whom the PH said would be returned to the top office if the coalition wins on Wednesday.

He said Mahathir was on a mission to topple Najib through “outrageous and false allegations” including calling Najib a “thief”.

“However, a thief believes everybody steals,” he said.

He said Najib had managed to increase the country’s gross national income to more than 50%, with some 2.7 million jobs created since coming to office in 2009.

“Indeed, the Malaysian economy is growing at such a fast rate that the World Bank had to increase its estimates for the nation’s growth three times over 2017, and the final figure, 5.9%, outstripped all their forecasts.”

Tengku Sariffuddin said the opposition has no track record but “a grand deception at its heart”, adding that DAP was using the “nonagenarian” Mahathir to split the Malay vote only to abandon him later.

“Should they win, they will never let Mahathir become Prime Minister – they know him too well.”