Malaysia’s King Sultan Abdullah named Ismail Sabri Yaakob as the new prime minister on Friday, 20 August, making him the third prime minister in the past three years.
Sabri’s predecessor Muhyiddin Yassin resigned on Monday after less than 18 months in power, following loss of majority support due to infighting within his ruling coalition over the criticism of Yassin’s handling of the pandemic.
King Abdullah said that Sabri will be sworn in as Malaysia’s ninth prime minister on Saturday as he had secured the support of 114 members of parliament, that is more than the 111 required for a simple majority, news agency AP reported.
Meanwhile, with the appointment of Sabri, who served as deputy prime minister under Yassin, would keep the ruling coalition intact and would also mark the return of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which lost the general elections for the first time in 2018 after a multi-billion dollar scandal.
However, despite the support of 114 lawmakers, Sabri still needs the support of Yassin’s party to keep the leadership.
Meanwhile, despite a seven-month state of emergency and a lockdown since June, daily new infections in Malaysia have more than doubled since June to hit a new record of 23,564 on Friday, AP reported. So far, more than 13,000 Malaysians have died to COVID.
Who is Ismail Sabri Yaakob:
Sabri was a lawyer before he joined politics and has held several ministerial posts in previous UMNO governments.
Under Muhyiddin’s government in March 2020, Ismail was named defence minister, while becoming the government’s public face with daily briefings related to the pandemic.
Further, as Muhyiddin tried to garner support from UNMO, Sabri was made the deputy prime minister in July.
(With inputs from AP)
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