“A lot of people will not be able to perform the haj this time because the government will not be paying for it with stolen money.
“If you want to, we can steal and pay, but we don’t believe in stealing money,” he said during a dinner speech in Tokyo with the Malaysian community in Japan.
The speech was shown over Facebook.
Mahathir also raised the issue of the country’s debts, stating that the government had to deal with a RM1 trillion debt.
“The problem is how do we repay this loan? Najib Razak took the easy way out and he sold land to raise money to pay debts.
“But we can’t keep on selling land in order to raise money or we will soon find there is no Malaysia except for some foreign country,” he told the crowd.
He assured participants that Pakatan Harapan was trying to change things in order to solve the financial situation of the country.
“We know it will take a long time in order to resolve the problem.”
On Najib’s possible arrest
Mahathir said although many were waiting for Najib to be arrested, it was not a simple thing.
“Well, it is not as easy as we need to collect evidence that will stand up in court.
“If we fail to do that, he might win. What will happen if he wins the trial and is found not guilty?
“All the bad things we said about him will be questioned by the people who voted us in,” Mahathir said.
He also pointed out that unlike the previous government, the current administration did not have any influence over the courts.
Mahathir said power must be divided among the legislative, executive and judiciary to allow check and balance.
In his speech, Mahathir said the new Pakatan Harapan government had to rehabilitate the country.
“People who already have a fairly good life will not get Harapan’s version of BR1M (people’s aid).
“We don’t call it BR1M, of course, we call it by some other name because we don’t want to inherit their (previous government’s) bad habits,” he said.
He also praised Malaysians who had contributed to Tabung Harapan and said the money collected would be used towards paying the country’s debt.
“Some people decided they should donate some money to the government and it is not at the government’s urging.
“By now, we have more than RM40 million. Of course, when you need to pay RM1 trillion (in debts), RM40 million is nothing but the gesture is much appreciated.”
He said he is grateful to all those who have contributed to the fund.
“Even in schools, little boys collect money to give to the government.”