title: Human nutrition

text: In use from his life in the 1st century AD until the 17th century, it was heresy to disagree with the teachings of Galen for 1500 years. Most of Galen's teachings were gathered and enhanced in the late 11th century by Benedictine monks at the School of Salerno in "Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum", which still had users in the 17th century. Galen believed in the bodily "humours" of Hippocrates, and he taught that "pneuma" is the source of life. Four elements (earth, air, fire and water) combine into "complexion", which combines into states (the four temperaments: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic). The states are made up of pairs of attributes (hot and moist, cold and moist, hot and dry, and cold and dry), which are made of four humours: blood, phlegm, green (or yellow) bile, and black bile (the bodily form of the elements). Galen thought that for a person to have gout, kidney stones, or arthritis was scandalous, which Gratzer likens to Samuel Butler's "Erehwon" (1872) where sickness is a crime.


title: Human nutrition

text: In the 1500s, Paracelsus was probably the first to criticize Galen publicly. Also in the 16th century, scientist and artist Leonardo da Vinci compared metabolism to a burning candle. Leonardo did not publish his works on this subject, but he was not afraid of thinking for himself and he definitely disagreed with Galen. Ultimately, 16th century works of Andreas Vesalius, sometimes called the father of modern human anatomy, overturned Galen's ideas. He was followed by piercing thought amalgamated with the era's mysticism and religion sometimes fueled by the mechanics of Newton and Galileo. Jan Baptist van Helmont, who discovered several gases such as carbon dioxide, performed the first quantitative experiment. Robert Boyle advanced chemistry. Sanctorius measured body weight. Physician Herman Boerhaave modeled the digestive process. Physiologist Albrecht von Haller worked out the difference between nerves and muscles.


title: Human nutrition

text: Sometimes forgotten during his life, James Lind, a physician in the British navy, performed the first scientific nutrition experiment in 1747. Lind discovered that lime juice saved sailors that had been at sea for years from scurvy, a deadly and painful bleeding disorder. Between 1500 and 1800, an estimated two million sailors had died of scurvy. The discovery was ignored for forty years, but after about 1850, British sailors became known as "limeys". The essential vitamin C within citrus fruits would not be identified by scientists until 1932.


title: Human nutrition

text: Around 1770, Antoine Lavoisier discovered the details of metabolism, demonstrating that the oxidation of food is the source of body heat. Called the most fundamental chemical discovery of the 18th century, Lavoisier discovered the principle of conservation of mass. His ideas made the phlogiston theory of combustion obsolete.


title: Human nutrition

text: In 1790, George Fordyce recognized calcium as necessary for the survival of fowl. In the early 19th century, the elements carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen were recognized as the primary components of food, and methods to measure their proportions were developed.


title: Human nutrition

text: In 1816, François Magendie discovered that dogs fed only carbohydrates (sugar), fat (olive oil), and water died evidently of starvation, but dogs also fed protein survived – identifying protein as an essential dietary component. William Prout in 1827 was the first person to divide foods into carbohydrates, fat, and protein. In 1840, Justus von Liebig discovered the chemical makeup of carbohydrates (sugars), fats (fatty acids) and proteins (amino acids). During the 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Dumas and von Liebig quarrelled over their shared belief that animals get their protein directly from plants (animal and plant protein are the same and that humans do not create organic compounds). With a reputation as the leading organic chemist of his day but with no credentials in animal physiology, von Liebig grew rich making food extracts like beef bouillon and infant formula that were later found to be of questionable nutritious value.


title: Human nutrition

text: In the early 1880s, Kanehiro Takaki observed that Japanese sailors (whose diets consisted almost entirely of white rice) developed beriberi (or endemic neuritis, a disease causing heart problems and paralysis), but British sailors and Japanese naval officers did not. Adding various types of vegetables and meats to the diets of Japanese sailors prevented the disease. (This was not because of the increased protein as Takaki supposed, but because it introduced a few parts per million of thiamine to the diet.)).


title: Human nutrition

text: In the 1860s, Claude Bernard discovered that body fat can be synthesized from carbohydrate and protein, showing that the energy in blood glucose can be stored as fat or as glycogen.


title: Human nutrition

text: In 1896, Eugen Baumann observed iodine in thyroid glands. In 1897, Christiaan Eijkman worked with natives of Java, who also had beriberi. Eijkman observed that chickens fed the native diet of white rice developed the symptoms of beriberi but remained healthy when fed unprocessed brown rice with the outer bran intact. His assistant, Gerrit Grijns correctly identified and described the anti-beriberi substance in rice. Eijkman cured the natives by feeding them brown rice, discovering that food can cure disease. Over two decades later, nutritionists learned that the outer rice bran contains vitamin B1, also known as thiamine.


title: Human nutrition

text: In the early 20th century, Carl von Voit and Max Rubner independently measured caloric energy expenditure in different species of animals, applying principles of physics in nutrition. In 1906, Edith G. Willcock and Frederick Hopkins showed that the amino acid tryptophan aids the well-being of mice but it did not assure their growth. In the middle of twelve years of attempts to isolate them, Hopkins said in a 1906 lecture that "unsuspected dietetic factors", other than calories, protein, and minerals, are needed to prevent deficiency diseases. In 1907, Stephen M. Babcock and Edwin B. Hart started the cow feeding, single-grain experiment, which took nearly four years to complete.


title: Human nutrition

text: In 1912 Casimir Funk coined the term vitamin to label a vital factor in the diet: from the words "vital" and "amine", because these unknown substances preventing scurvy, beriberi, and pellagra, and were thought then to derive from ammonia. In 1913 Elmer McCollum discovered the first vitamins, fat-soluble vitamin A and water-soluble vitamin B (in 1915; later identified as a complex of several water-soluble vitamins) and named vitamin C as the then-unknown substance preventing scurvy. Lafayette Mendel (1872-1935) and Thomas Osborne (1859–1929) also performed pioneering work on vitamins A and B.


title: Human nutrition

text: In 1919, Sir Edward Mellanby incorrectly identified rickets as a vitamin A deficiency because he could cure it in dogs with cod liver oil. In 1922, McCollum destroyed the vitamin A in cod liver oil, but found that it still cured rickets. Also in 1922, H.M. Evans and L.S. Bishop discover vitamin E as essential for rat pregnancy, originally calling it "food factor X" until 1925.


title: Human nutrition

text: In 1925 Hart discovered that iron absorption requires trace amounts of copper. In 1927 Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus synthesized vitamin D, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1928. In 1928 Albert Szent-Györgyi isolated ascorbic acid, and in 1932 proved that it is vitamin C by preventing scurvy. In 1935 he synthesized it, and in 1937 won a Nobel Prize for his efforts. Szent-Györgyi concurrently elucidated much of the citric acid cycle.


title: Human nutrition

text: In the 1930s, William Cumming Rose identified essential amino acids, necessary protein components that the body cannot synthesize. In 1935 Eric Underwood and Hedley Marston independently discovered the necessity of cobalt. In 1936, Eugene Floyd DuBois showed that work and school performance are related to caloric intake. In 1938, Erhard Fernholz discovered the chemical structure of vitamin E. It was synthesised the same year by Paul Karrer.


title: Human nutrition

text: Oxford University closed down its nutrition department after World War II because the subject seemed to have been completed between 1912 and 1944.


title: Human nutrition

text: "Nutritional science" as a separate, independent science discipline was institutionalized in the 1950s. At the instigation of the British physiologist John Yudkin at the University of London, the degrees Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in nutritional science were established. The first students were admitted in 1953, and in 1954 the Department of Nutrition was officially opened. In Germany, institutionalization followed in November 1956, when Hans-Diedrich Cremer was appointed to the chair for human nutrition in Giessen. Over time, seven other universities with similar institutions followed in Germany. From the 1950s to 1970s, a focus of nutritional science was on dietary fat and sugar. From the 1970s to the 1990s, attention was put on diet-related chronic diseases and supplementation.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The disability-adjusted life year (DALY) is a measure of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death. It was developed in the 1990s as a way of comparing the overall health and life expectancy of different countries.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The DALY has become more common in the field of public health and health impact assessment (HIA). It not only includes the potential years of life lost due to premature death, but also includes equivalent years of 'healthy' life lost by virtue of being in states of poor health or disability. In so doing, mortality and morbidity are combined into a single, common metric.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The disability-adjusted life year is a societal measure of the disease or disability burden in populations. DALYs are calculated by combining measures of life expectancy as well as the adjusted quality of life during a burdensome disease or disability for a population. DALYs are related to the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) measure; however, QALYs only measure the benefit with and without medical intervention and therefore do not measure the total burden. Also, QALYs tend to be an individual measure, and not a societal measure.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Traditionally, health liabilities were expressed using one measure, the years of life lost (YLL) due to dying early. A medical condition that did not result in dying younger than expected was not counted. The burden of living with a disease or disability is measured by the years lost due to disability (YLD) component, sometimes also known as years lost due to disease or years lived with disability/disease.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The DALY relies on an acceptance that the most appropriate measure of the effects of chronic illness is time, both time lost due to premature death and time spent disabled by disease. One DALY, therefore, is equal to one year of healthy life lost.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: How much a medical condition affects a person is called the "disability weight" (DW). This is determined by disease or disability and does not vary with age. Tables have been created of thousands of diseases and disabilities, ranging from Alzheimer's disease to loss of finger, with the disability weight meant to indicate the level of disability that results from the specific condition.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Examples of the disability weight are shown on the right. Some of these are "short term", and the long-term weights may be different.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The most noticeable change between the 2004 and 2010 figures for disability weights above are for blindness as it was considered the weights are a measure of health rather than well-being (or welfare) and a blind person is not considered to be ill. "In the terminology, the term disability is used broadly to refer to departures from optimal health in any of the important domains of health."


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: At the population level, the disease burden as measured by DALYs is calculated by adding YLL to YLD. YLL uses the life expectancy at the time of death. YLD is determined by the number of years disabled weighted by level of disability caused by a disability or disease using the formula:


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: In this formula, I = number of incident cases in the population, DW = disability weight of specific condition, and L = average duration of the case until remission or death (years). There is also a prevalence (as opposed to incidence) based calculation for YLD. Number of years lost due to premature death is calculated by


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Note that life expectancies are not the same at different ages. For example, in Paleolithic era, life expectancy at birth was 33 years, but life expectancy at the age of 15 was an additional 39 years (total 54).


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Historically Japanese life expectancy statistics have been used as the standard for measuring premature death, as the Japanese have the longest life expectancies. Other approaches have since emerged, include using national life tables for YLL calculations, or using the reference life table derived by the GBD study.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The World Health Organization (WHO) used age weighting and time discounting at 3 percent in DALYs prior to 2010 but discontinued using them starting in 2010.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: There are two components to this differential accounting of time: age-weighting and time-discounting. Age-weighting is based on the theory of human capital. Commonly, years lived as a young adult are valued more highly than years spent as a young child or older adult, as these are years of peak productivity. Age-weighting receives considerable criticism for valuing young adults at the expense of children and the old. Some criticize, while others rationalize, this as reflecting society's interest in productivity and receiving a return on its investment in raising children. This age-weighting system means that somebody disabled at 30 years of age, for ten years, would be measured as having a higher loss of DALYs (a greater burden of disease), than somebody disabled by the same disease or injury at the age of 70 for ten years.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: This age-weighting function is by no means a universal methodology in studies, but is common when using DALYs. Cost-effectiveness studies using , for example, do not discount time at different ages differently. This age-weighting function applies only to the calculation of DALYs lost due to disability. Years lost to premature death are determined from the age at death and life expectancy.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2001–2002 counted disability adjusted life years equally for all ages, but the GBD 1990 and GBD 2004 studies used the formula


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: formula_1 where formula_2 is the age at which the year is lived and formula_3 is the value assigned to it relative to an average value of 1.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: In these studies, future years were also discounted at a 3% rate to account for future health care losses. Time discounting, which is separate from the age-weighting function, describes preferences in time as used in economic models.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The effects of the interplay between life expectancy and years lost, discounting, and social weighting are complex, depending on the severity and duration of illness. For example, the parameters used in the GBD 1990 study generally give greater weight to deaths at any year prior to age 39 than afterward, with the death of a newborn weighted at 33 DALYs and the death of someone aged 5–20 weighted at approximately 36 DALYs.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: As a result of numerous discussions, by 2010 the World Health Organization had abandoned the ideas of age weighting and time discounting. They had also substituted the idea of prevalence for "incidence" (when a condition started) because this is what surveys measure.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The methodology is not an economic measure. It measures how much healthy life is lost. It does not assign a monetary value to any person or condition, and it does not measure how much productive work or money is lost as a result of death and disease.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: However, HALYs, including DALYs and QALYs, are especially useful in guiding the allocation of health resources as they provide a common numerator, allowing for the expression of utility in terms of dollar/DALY, or dollar/QALY. For example, in Gambia, provision of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine costs $670 per DALY saved. This number can then be compared to other treatments for other diseases, to determine whether investing resources in preventing or treating a different disease would be more efficient in terms of overall health.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Cancer (25.1/1,000), cardiovascular (23.8/1,000), mental problems (17.6/1,000), neurological (15.7/1,000), chronic respiratory (9.4/1,000) and diabetes (7.2/1,000) are the main causes of good years of expected life lost to disease or premature death. Despite this, Australia has one of the longest life expectancies in the world.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: These illustrate the problematic diseases and outbreaks occurring in 2013 in Zimbabwe, shown to have the greatest impact on health disability were typhoid, anthrax, malaria, common diarrhea, and dysentery.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) DALY estimates from 2004 for the world's 25 most populous countries give Asian/Pacific countries and the United States as the places where PTSD impact is most concentrated (as shown here).


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The disability-adjusted life years attributable to hearing impairment for noise-exposed U.S. workers across all industries was calculated to be 2.53 healthy years lost annually per 1,000 noise-exposed workers. Workers in the mining and construction sectors lost 3.45 and 3.09 healthy years per 1,000 workers, respectively. Overall, 66% of the sample worked in the manufacturing sector and represented 70% of healthy years lost by all workers.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Originally developed by Harvard University for the World Bank in 1990, the World Health Organization subsequently adopted the method in 1996 as part of the Ad hoc Committee on Health Research "Investing in Health Research & Development" report. The DALY was first conceptualized by Christopher J. L. Murray and Lopez in work carried out with the World Health Organization and the World Bank known as the Global Burden of Disease Study, which was published in 1990. It is now a key measure employed by the United Nations World Health Organization in such publications as its "Global Burden of Disease".


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Some critics have alleged that DALYs are essentially an economic measure of human productive capacity for the affected individual. In response, defenders of DALYs have argued that while DALYs have an age-weighting function that has been rationalized based on the economic productivity of persons at that age, health-related quality of life measures are used to determine the disability weights, which range from 0 to 1 (no disability to 100% disabled) for all disease. These defenders emphasize that disability weights are based not on a person's ability to work, but rather on the effects of the disability on the person's life in general. Hence, mental illness is one of the leading diseases as measured by global burden of disease studies, with depression accounting for 51.84 million DALYs. Perinatal conditions, which affect infants with a very low age-weight function, are the leading cause of lost DALYs at 90.48 million. Measles is fifteenth at 23.11 million.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: Some commentators have expressed doubt over whether the disease burden surveys (such as EQ-5D) fully capture the impacts of mental illness, due to factors including ceiling effects.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: According to Pliskin et al., the QALY model requires utility independent, risk neutral, and constant proportional tradeoff behaviour. Because of these theoretical assumptions, the meaning and usefulness of the QALY is debated. Perfect health is difficult, if not impossible, to define. Some argue that there are health states worse than being dead, and that therefore there should be negative values possible on the health spectrum (indeed, some health economists have incorporated negative values into calculations). Determining the level of health depends on measures that some argue place disproportionate importance on physical pain or disability over mental health.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: The method of ranking interventions on grounds of their cost per QALY gained ratio (or ICER) is controversial because it implies a quasi-utilitarian calculus to determine who will or will not receive treatment. However, its supporters argue that since health care resources are inevitably limited, this method enables them to be allocated in the way that is approximately optimal for society, including most patients. Another concern is that it does not take into account equity issues such as the overall distribution of health states – particularly since younger, healthier cohorts have many times more QALYs than older or sicker individuals. As a result, QALY analysis may undervalue treatments which benefit


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: the elderly or others with a lower life expectancy. Also, many would argue that all else being equal, patients with more severe illness should be prioritised over patients with less severe illness if both would get the same absolute increase in utility.


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: As early as 1989, Loomes and McKenzie recommended that research be conducted concerning the validity of QALYs. In 2010, with funding from the European Commission, the European Consortium in Healthcare Outcomes and Cost-Benefit Research (ECHOUTCOME) began a major study on QALYs as used in health technology assessment. Ariel Beresniak, the study's lead author, was quoted as saying that it was the "largest-ever study specifically dedicated to testing the assumptions of the QALY". In January 2013, at its final conference, ECHOUTCOME released preliminary results of its study which surveyed 1361 people "from academia" in Belgium, France, Italy and the UK. The researchers asked the subjects to respond to 14 questions concerning their preferences for various health states and durations of those states (e.g., 15 years limping versus 5 years in a wheelchair). They concluded that "preferences expressed by the respondents were not consistent with the QALY theoretical assumptions" that quality of life can be measured in consistent intervals, that life-years and quality of life are independent of each other, that people are neutral about risk, and that willingness to gain or lose life-years is constant over time. ECHOUTCOME also released "European Guidelines for Cost-Effectiveness Assessments of Health Technologies", which recommended not using QALYs in healthcare decision making. Instead, the guidelines recommended that cost-effectiveness analyses focus on "costs per relevant clinical outcome".


title: Disability-adjusted life year

text: In response to the ECHOUTCOME study, representatives of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the Scottish Medicines Consortium, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development made the following points. First, QALYs are better than alternative measures. Second, the study was "limited". Third, problems with QALYs were already widely acknowledged. Fourth, the researchers did not take budgetary constraints into consideration. Fifth, the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence uses QALYs that are based on 3395 interviews with residents of the UK, as opposed to residents of several European countries. Finally, people who call for the elimination of QALYs may have "vested interests".


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Graham Vivian Sutherland (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmaking, tapestry and glass design.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Printmaking, mostly of romantic landscapes, dominated Sutherland's work during the 1920s. He developed his art by working in watercolours before switching to using oil paints in the 1940s. A series of surreal oil painting depicting the Pembrokeshire landscape secured his reputation as a leading British modern artist. He served as an official war artist in the Second World War, painting industrial scenes on the British home front. After the war, Sutherland embraced figurative painting, beginning with his 1946 work, "The Crucifixion". Subsequent paintings combined religious symbolism with motifs from nature, such as thorns.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Such was Sutherland's standing in post-war Britain that he was commissioned to design the massive central tapestry for the new Coventry Cathedral, "Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph". A number of portrait commissions in the 1950s proved highly controversial. Winston Churchill hated Sutherland's depiction of him and subsequently Lady Spencer-Churchill had the painting destroyed.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: During his career, Sutherland taught at a number of art colleges, notably at Chelsea School of Art and at Goldsmiths College, where he had been a student. In 1955, Sutherland and his wife purchased a property near Nice. Living abroad led to something of a decline in his status in Britain. However, a visit to Pembrokeshire in 1967, his first trip there in nearly twenty years, led to a creative renewal that went some way toward restoring his reputation as a leading British artist.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Graham Sutherland was born in Streatham in London, the eldest of three children of George Humphrey Vivian Sutherland (1873-1952), a barrister who later became a civil servant in the Land Registry and the Board of Education, and his wife Elsie (1877-1957), née Foster. Both were amateur painters and musicians. Graham Sutherland attended Homefield Preparatory School in Sutton and was then educated at Epsom College in Surrey until 1919. Upon leaving school, after some preliminary coaching in art, Sutherland began an engineering apprenticeship at the Midland Railway locomotive works in Derby where several members of the extended Sutherland family had previously worked. After a year he succeeded in persuading his father that he was not destined for a career in engineering and that he should be allowed to study art. There being no vacancies at his first choice, the Slade School of Fine Art, he entered Goldsmiths' School of Art in 1921, specialising in engraving and etching before graduating in 1926. In both 1925 and 1928, Sutherland exhibited drawings and engravings at the XXI Gallery in London. While still a student Sutherland established a reputation as a fine printmaker and commercial printmaking would be his main source of income throughout the late 1920s. His early prints of pastoral subjects show the influence of Samuel Palmer, largely mediated by the older etcher, F.L. Griggs.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Following the collapse of the print market in the early 1930s, due to the Great Depression, Sutherland began to concentrate on painting. Sutherland's early paintings were mainly landscapes and show an affinity with the work of Paul Nash. In 1934 he visited Pembrokeshire in Wales for the first time and was profoundly inspired by its landscape. The region remained a source for his paintings for much of the following decade and he visited the area each year until the start of the Second World War. Sutherland focused on the inherent strangeness of natural forms, abstracting them to sometimes give his work a surrealist appearance and in 1936 he exhibited at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London. As the 1930s progressed and the political situation in Europe grew worse he began to depict ominous, distorted human forms emerging from the land. Oil paintings of the Pembrokeshire landscape dominated his first one-man exhibition of paintings held in September 1938 at the Rosenberg and Helft Gallery in London. It was these oil paintings, of surreal, organic landscapes of the Pembrokeshire coast, that secured his reputation as a leading British modern artist.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Alongside oil painting, Sutherland also took up glass design, fabric design, and poster design during the 1930s, and taught engraving at the Chelsea School of Art from 1926. Between 1935 and 1940, he also taught composition and book illustration at Chelsea. Sutherland converted to Catholicism in December 1926, the year before his marriage to Kathleen Barry (1905-1991), who had been a fellow student at Goldsmiths College. The couple, who were inseparable, lived at various locations in Kent before eventually buying a property in Trottiscliffe in 1945.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: At the start of World War Two, the Chelsea School of Art closed for the duration of the conflict and Sutherland moved to rural Gloucestershire. Between 1940 and 1945, Sutherland was employed as a full-time, salaried artist by the War Artists' Advisory Committee. He recorded bomb damage in rural and urban Wales towards the end of 1940, then bomb damage caused by the Blitz in the City and East End of London. Almost all of Sutherland's paintings of bomb damage from the Blitz, either in Wales or in London, are titled "Devastation:..." and as such form a single body of work reflecting the needs of war-time propaganda, with precise locations not being disclosed and human remains not shown. A number of features reoccur within this body of work, for example, the fallen lift shafts that were often the most recognizable aspect of larger bombed buildings and a double row of bombed houses Sutherland saw in the Silvertown area of the East End.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Sutherland returned to Wales in September 1941 to work on a series of paintings of blast furnaces. From June 1942, Sutherland painted further industrial scenes, first at tin mines in Cornwall then at a limestone quarry in Derbyshire and then at open-cast and underground coal mines in the Swansea area of South Wales. Sutherland spent four months from the end of March 1944 at the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolwich Arsenal working on a series of five paintings for WAAC. In December 1944 he was sent to depict the damage inflicted by the RAF on the railway yards at Trappes and on the flying bomb sites at Saint-Leu-d'Esserent in France. In all Sutherland completed some 150 paintings as part of his WAAC commission.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: In 1944 Sutherland was commissioned by Walter Hussey, the Vicar of St Matthew's Church, Northampton and an important patron of modern religious art, to paint "The Crucifixion" (1946). This was Sutherland's first major religious painting and his first large figure study. "The Crucifixion" shows a pale Christ with broken limbs and was followed by a series of paintings that combined abstract forms from nature, usually the spikes and points of thorns, with religious iconography. A subsequent series, "Origins of the Land", developed this approach showing combinations of rocks and fossils in increasingly complex and abstract designs.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: In 1946, Sutherland had his first exhibition in New York. The same year he also taught painting at Goldsmiths' School of Art. From 1947 into the 1960s, his work was inspired by the landscape of the French Riviera, and he spent several months there each year. Eventually, in 1955, he purchased the villa Tempe à Pailla, designed by the Irish architect Eileen Gray, at Menton near the French-Italian border.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Beginning in 1949, alongside his abstract works, Sutherland painted a series of portraits of leading public figures, with those of Somerset Maugham and Lord Beaverbrook among the best known. Beaverbrook regarded his portrait by Sutherland, which clearly depicted him as cunning and reptilian, as both an "outrage" and a "masterpiece". Maugham initially greatly disliked his portrait but came to admire it even though it had been described as making him look "like the madam of a brothel". Sutherland's "Portrait of Winston Churchill" (1954) greatly upset the sitter, who initially refused to accept its presentation. The elderly Churchill had wanted to direct the composition towards a fictionalised scene but Sutherland had insisted upon a realistic portrayal, one described by Simon Schama as "No bulldog, no baby face. Just an obituary in paint". After initially refusing to be presented with it at all, Churchill accepted the painting disparagingly as “a remarkable example of "modern art"". Although the painting was subsequently destroyed on the orders of Lady Spencer-Churchill, some of Sutherland's studies for the portrait have survived. In all, Sutherland painted over fifty portraits, often of European aristocrats or senior businessmen. Following the Churchill portrait, Sutherland's portraits of, among others, Konrad Adenauer and the Queen Mother established him as something of an unofficial state portrait painter. This status was underlined by the award of the Order of Merit in 1960.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: In 1951, Sutherland was commissioned to produce a large work for the Festival of Britain. He exhibited in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1952 along with Edward Wadsworth and the New Aspects of British Sculpture Group. From 1948 until 1954, Sutherland served as a trustee of the Tate gallery.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: In early 1954, Sutherland was commissioned to design a monumental tapestry for the new Coventry Cathedral. "Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph" took three years to complete and was installed in 1962. To complete the work, Sutherland visited the weavers, of Felletin in France, on nine occasions.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: From his portrait work, Sutherland acquired several patrons in Italy and took to spending the summer in Venice. However, in 1967, for an Italian television documentary, Sutherland visited Pembrokeshire for the first time in over twenty years and became inspired by the landscape to regularly work in the region until his death. Living abroad had led to something of a decline in his status in Britain. However, his return to working in Pembrokeshire went some way toward restoring his reputation as a leading British artist.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Much of his work from this point until the end of his life incorporates motifs taken from the area, such as the estuaries at Sandy Haven and Picton. His work from this period includes two suites of prints "The Bees" (1976–77) and "Apollinaire" (1978–79).


title: Graham Sutherland

text: There were major retrospective shows at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1951, the Tate in 1982, the Musée Picasso, Antibes, France in 1998 and the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2005. A major exhibition of rarely seen works on paper by Sutherland, curated by artist George Shaw, was shown in Oxford, in 2011–12.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: Sutherland died in 1980 and was buried in the graveyard of the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Trottiscliffe, Kent.


title: Graham Sutherland

text: The main building of Coventry School of Art and Design, part of Coventry University, is named after Sutherland. A radio play, "Portrait of Winston", by Jonathan Smith, is a dramatisation of his portrait of Winston Churchill. The same incident features in the Netflix series, "The Crown", in which Sutherland is played by Stephen Dillane, and was discussed by Simon Schama in his 2015 BBC television series "The Face of Britain by Simon Schama". Works by Sutherland are held in the collections of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery, Kirklees Museums and Art Gallery, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Northampton Museums and Art Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Southampton City Art Gallery, The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art, Tenby Museum and Art Gallery, The Fitzwilliam Museum and The Priseman Seabrook Collection.


title: The Animal

text: The Animal is a 2001 American comedy film directed by Luke Greenfield, written by Rob Schneider and Tom Brady, and starring Schneider in the lead role, Colleen Haskell, John C. McGinley, Guy Torry, and Edward Asner. The film depicts a police station evidence clerk who is critically injured and is put back together by a mad scientist who transplants animal parts, resulting in strange changes to his behavior.


title: The Animal

text: In the town of Elkerton, Marvin Mange is an awkward, clumsy nice-guy who dreams of being a police officer like his dad was. He continuously fails the physical test to become a full-fledged police officer, is mistreated by sleazy police sergeant Doug Sisk, and he awkwardly fumbles through a first encounter with his idol, environmental protester Rianna. He works in the police station as an evidence clerk and is friends with airport security guard Miles who is a victim of "reverse racism" and fellow cadet Fatty. While alone at the station, he receives a robbery call from a restaurant. He takes the call and drives off the road, tumbling down a mountain. A boulder falls on the car.


title: The Animal

text: Days later, Marvin returns to his normal life with no memory of what happened. He is full of life while not noticing surgical marks on his back and fur on his rear end. He can outrun horses, mean dogs are scared of him, he jumps to catch frisbees in his mouth, and he does not need his asthma medicine. He thinks it is due to his consumption of "Badger Milk", which is guaranteed in the ads to make him stronger.


title: The Animal

text: He goes to the airport to talk to Miles about his problem. While there, Marvin sniffs out a man hiding heroin in his rectum. Marvin is declared a hero and is made a full-fledged police officer by Chief Marion Wilson.


title: The Animal

text: Marvin often wakes up in strange places, and subsequently hears about animal attacks that occurred in the middle of the night. Because of these attacks, the mad scientist Dr. Wilder believes that Marvin is out of control. Wilder takes him to his laboratory, and explains about the grafts and transplants that saved Marvin's life and gave him animal powers. He gives him pointers on controlling the rampant animal urges that often prompt him to behave inappropriately in public.


title: The Animal

text: Despite continuing embarrassments caused by Marvin's animal urges, his animal abilities allow him to excel as a police officer. He is partnered with Sisk, and gets a date with Rianna.


title: The Animal

text: Chief Wilson questions Marvin about late-night attacks on cows because one of the witnesses made a police sketch and it looks like Marvin. Chief Wilson puts Marvin on paid leave.


title: The Animal

text: Rianna goes to Marvin's house, where he has barricaded himself inside. She is convinced that he cannot be behind the animal attacks. They spend the night together. Marvin insists on being tied up so he cannot hurt anyone, but Rianna unties him after he falls asleep. The police show up to arrest Marvin for an attack on a hunter that night. Rianna convinces him to run. Marvin escapes to the woods. The police organize a search party to capture Marvin. While running through the woods, Marvin finds Wilder. The scientist tells him that another patient of his is out of control.


title: The Animal

text: Sgt. Sisk confronts Marvin and is about to shoot him. Rianna jumps from a tree onto Sisk. In the presence of Wilder, Miles, and Fatty, she confesses that she was also operated on by Wilder and attacked the hunter in order to protect the turkey vulture that she released into the wild. An angry mob and police arrive to take out Marvin. Miles takes the blame for everything. Once the mob thinks a black man was responsible, the mob members don't want to take action causing Chief Wilson to call off the hunt much to the dismay of Miles.


title: The Animal

text: One year later, Marvin and Rianna get married, open an animal sanctuary, and have a litter of children. While watching television, they see Dr. Wilder win the Nobel Prize. He says he owes it all to his fiancée Yolanda, the spokesmodel for Badger Milk. There are large scars on her back, implying that Wilder performed the experiment on her as well.


title: The Animal

text: Wes Takahashi, former animator and visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, makes a cameo appearance as a news reporter. Fred Stoller also cameos as a news reporter that interviews Marvin about his abilities.


title: The Animal

text: "The Animal" debuted on June 1, 2001, grossing $19.6 million U.S. in its opening weekend (#3 behind "Shrek" and "Pearl Harbor"). With a production budget of $47 million, the movie grossed $84,772,742 internationally.


title: The Animal

text: This film received negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 30% based on 83 reviews, with its consensus stating: "While less offensive and more charming than recent gross-humored comedies, "The Animal" is still rather mediocre". Metacritic gave the film a score of 43% based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+.


title: The Animal

text: Robert Koehler of "Variety magazine" wrote: "The Animal is never more nor less than stupid, but stupid in ways that deliver goofiness rather than rampant humiliation."


title: The Animal

text: Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" described it as "an Adam Sandler reject" and wondered how this "raunchy innuendo wrapped in a PG-13 rating" got past the censors.


title: The Animal

text: Rob Schneider was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Actor of the Decade for his performance in the film.


title: The Animal

text: Despite mostly negative critical reaction, at the time of its release film critic David Manning gave the film critical praise. In late 2001, Manning was revealed to be a fictitious character created by Sony to fake publicity for the film. At the time, Sony claimed that the error was due to a layout artist who entered 'dummy text' into print advertisements during their design, which was accidentally never replaced with real text.


title: The Animal

text: In October 2022, it was announced a sequel is in development. In addition to reprising his role from the first film, Rob Schneider will also serve as director, from a script that he co-wrote with Patricia Schneider, and Jamie Lissow. Schneider will also serve as a producer on the movie alongside Michael McConnell. The project will be a joint-venture production between Content Partners, Revolution Studios, MarVista Entertainment, Zero Gravity Management, and Tubi Original Films. Intended to be released via streaming as an exclusive Tubi movie, the project is near being officially green-lit by the associated film studios. Principal photography is scheduled to commence in early-2023, with its tentative release scheduled for later that year.


Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport is the main international airport in Mauritius. It is located southeast of the capital city of Port Louis. The airport was previously known as the "Plaisance Airport" and has direct flights to several destinations in Africa, Asia, Europe and is home to the country's national airline Air Mauritius. Airports of Mauritius Co. Ltd (AML) is the owner and operator of the airport, the Government of Mauritius is the major shareholder of AML.


title: Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport

text: As a part of the defence of Mauritius, in 1942, when Mauritius was a Crown colony, the government started construction of a Royal Naval Air Station at Plaisance near Mahébourg. This was subsequently handed over to the Royal Air Force at the end of World War II and civilian operations started shortly afterwards. The operations of the civil airport started just after the Second World War which gave a boost to the Mauritian economy.


text: The first flight to Rodrigues island was made on 10 September 1972, an Air Mauritius flight from Plaisance Airport to the Plaine Corail Airport (now Sir Gaëtan Duval Airport) at Rodrigues using a Twin Otter (3B-NAB). Later the Twin Otters were replaced by ATR 42-300 and ATR 42-500 twin turboprops.


text: Later in 1986, infrastructure works were undertaken to accommodate larger aircraft. Thus, a new terminal was built including airbridges to meet the expected increase in traffic growth, and a car park attached to the new building and customs service for international routes. The new terminal consisted of two floors and could accommodate up to four aircraft simultaneously via airbridges.


text: A new passenger terminal was inaugurated on 30 August 2013, and became fully operational in September 2013. The structure of the New Airport Terminal is designed after the "Traveller's palm", a tropical plant that grows on Mauritius. It is connected to the existing terminal (refurbishment began in 2014) and has a capacity of 4 million passengers. Airport Terminal Operations Ltd (ATOL) is responsible for the design, building and operation of the new terminal building.


text: The new terminal, which cost US$306 million, is in line with the "Maurice Ile Durable" concept. Environmental and ecological aspects taken into consideration include using solar energy collected by photovoltaic cells, recovering rain water, integrating nature to the heart of the building, and including thermo-insulated facades to reduce heat gain. The terminal covers an area of 57,000 square meters and is equipped with five boarding gates with airbridges, including one compatible with the large Airbus A380, check-in desks for departing passengers, immigration counters, and baggage carousels.


title: Backbencher

text: In Westminster and other parliamentary systems, a backbencher is a member of parliament (MP) or a legislator who occupies no governmental office and is not a frontbench spokesperson in the Opposition, being instead simply a member of the "rank and file".


title: Backbencher

text: The term dates from 1855. The term derives from the fact that they sit physically behind the frontbench in the House of Commons. A backbencher may be a new parliamentary member yet to receive high office, a senior figure dropped from government, someone who for whatever reason is not chosen to sit in the government or an opposition spokesperson (such as a shadow cabinet if one exists), or someone who prefers to be a background influence, not in the spotlight. By extension, those who are not reliable supporters of all of their party's goals and policies and have resigned or been forced to resign may be relegated to the back benches. For example, in British political events, Clive Lewis became a backbencher after resigning from Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet over Brexit, and Boris Johnson became a backbencher again, after resigning as Foreign Secretary in Theresa May's cabinet, also over Brexit. May herself returned to the backbenches after her resignation from the premiership, to be succeeded by Johnson.


title: Backbencher

text: In most parliamentary systems, individual backbenchers have little power to affect government policy. However, they play a greater role in the work of the legislature itself; for example, sitting on parliamentary committees, where legislation is considered and parliamentary work is done in more detail than there is time for on the floor of the House. In addition, since backbenchers generally form the vast majority of government MPs – and even their totality in dualistic parliamentary systems, where Ministers cannot serve as MPs simultaneously, collectively they can sometimes exercise considerable power especially in cases where the policies of the government are unpopular or when a governing party or coalition is internally split. Backbenchers carry considerable influence when the government majority is small; for example, Ariel Sharon's second government's plan of Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip was frequently obstructed by backbenchers from both junior partners in the right-wing coalition (such as the Mafdal and National Union) and dissenters in Sharon's own Likud party. Although the internal dissenters within the Likud eventually ejected Sharon and his supporters out of the party in late 2005, the Sharon-led Kadima party that resulted from the splinter remained in control of the government and went on to win the 2006 elections.


title: Backbencher

text: In some legislative assemblies, sitting at the back of the chamber is not necessarily associated with having a minor role. In Switzerland, senior figures sit in the back rows in order to have a better overview and be closer to the doors for discussions outside the plenary. In Germany, the party leaders sit in the front row, but there are no designated places for other senior figures. The term backbenchers ("Hinterbänkler") therefore refers to largely unknown MPs without much influence, regardless of where they sit. Originally, the importance of the front rows for the leaders had also to do with the fact that acoustics were often unsatisfactory before microphones were introduced. Prominent or iconic political figures can also play a backbench role, as the case of Aung San Suu Kyi illustrates: the leader of Myanmar's opposition to military rule was first elected MP in 2012, but proved only marginally involved in legislative business.


title: Backbencher

text: The term "backbencher" has also been adopted outside parliamentary systems, such as the United States Congress. While legislative branches in presidential systems do not share the firm front bench/back bench dichotomy of the Westminster system, the term has been used to denote junior legislators, or legislators who are not part of party leadership within a legislative body. When Democrat Tim Ryan of Ohio challenged Nancy Pelosi of California for House Minority Leader in 2016, "The Washington Post" reported that he "emerged from the backbench — he literally sits on the last bench in the chamber".


title: Backbencher

text: The most important backbench role many would argue is that of a constituency representative. Constituents rely heavily on their MPs to represent them in parliament and make sure their concerns are heard and welfare is looked after, whether or not they voted for the MP representing them. Constituents may email and meet their MPs, raising the issues and concerns they want the government to hear. Without this link many people would find it extremely hard for their voices to be heard fairly by the government. Backbenchers have an important opportunity to raise their constituents concerns directly to the prime minister in Prime Minister's Questions. Performing well in this constituency role is vital for backbenchers, as if they aren't prominent names in their party, their performance in their constituency could be a big factor on whether they will be re-elected to their seat in the next election.


title: Backbencher

text: Backbenchers also have an unofficial agenda-setting power, with Opposition Day debates, private member's bills, and Prime Minister's Questions available to place items on the parliamentary agenda which are awkward for the government. The Wright Committee reforms introduced in the UK provided backbenchers with much more power in committees, giving Parliament greater control of its agenda, increasing backbench membership in committees vastly.


title: Backbencher

text: Additionally, the Commons Backbench Business Committee was created in 2010 with has cross-party support. It debates matters unlikely to be debated in government time, with each decision voted upon formally. By the end of the 2010 coalition government it had undergone 300 debates, ranging from prisoner voting rights to the Hillsborough disaster. Furthermore, they have influence as discussed above when they are a member of a committee, these committees provide a perfect opportunity for backbenchers to have their voices heard in the legislative process. It usually proves difficult for backbenchers to be involved and have direct input in the legislative process when they are not involved in these activities.


title: Backbencher

text: There has been much speculation on the influence backbenchers actually hold in Parliament. Many believe backbenchers hold little to no influence, however, there has been much research to suggest they have a significant background influence. For example, Meg Russell analysed UK government bills and found that successful amendments were due to parliamentary pressure, 60 per cent of these being substantive, proving the majority of legislation undergoes unofficial parliamentary pressure. Russell also analysed the impact of the Wright Committee Reforms and whether it strengthened backbench power and influence. She found that the Wright Committee led to a significant reduction in governmental and whips' hold over the Commons agenda. Finding that backbenchers have more independence and power because of these reforms, and giving them far more opportunity to set agendas and have their voices heard in Parliament. Furthermore, Louise Thompson found that introducing oral evidence into committees scrutinising government bills had a significant impact on backbench influence. Acting as a vehicle for the formulation of significant changes to government bills, additional opposition scrutiny, and a debating tool. Oral evidence was most identified in undertakings given by ministers to committee members. Whereas, the number of amendments formally accepted by the government at committee stages is low. It found that oral evidence had a direct impact on bills 89 per cent of the time. This again suggests that backbenchers exert influence in the background of the Westminster legislation process. Therefore, it can be seen that although backbenchers have little official legislation powers in Parliament, they often exert significant background influence on the legislative process.


title: SoBe

text: SoBe (stylized as ) is an American brand of teas, fruit-juice blends and enhanced water beverages owned by PepsiCo. The name SoBe is an abbreviation of South Beach, named after the upscale area located in Miami Beach, Florida. In the past, the SoBe name has also been licensed for gum and chocolate products. SoBe switched from glass bottles to plastic bottles for all of its beverages in 2010.


title: SoBe

text: SoBe began as the South Beach Beverage Company, a drink manufacturer based in Norwalk, Connecticut from 1996 to 2001. It was founded by Kevin McGovern, and co-founded by John Bello and Tom Schwalm in 1995. Their first product was "SoBe Black Tea 3G" which contained ginseng, guarana, and ginkgo. It proved to be popular and led to the introduction of other flavors. The company was bought by PepsiCo in October 2000.


title: SoBe

text: Mr. Green was a short-lived carbonated soda offered by SoBe, widely released in the United States. Shipping in April 2002 and first available to consumers in May, it was produced in 12 oz cans, 20 oz bottles, and 1- and 2-liter bottles. It was a rare carbonated beverage offered by SoBe.


title: SoBe

text: The soda's mascot of the same name was described as a "cyber lizard" in SoBe's press release. This character was a modernized version of the lizard found on other SoBe products.


title: Pickaxe

text: A pickaxe, pick-axe, or pick is a generally T-shaped hand tool used for prying. Its head is typically metal, attached perpendicularly to a longer handle, traditionally made of wood, occasionally metal, and increasingly fiberglass.


title: Pickaxe

text: A standard pickaxe, similar to a "pick mattock", has a pointed end on one side of its head and a broad flat "axe" blade opposite. A gradual curve characteristically spans the length of the head. The next most common configuration features two spikes, one slightly longer than the other.


title: Pickaxe

text: The pointed end is used both for breaking and prying, the axe for hoeing, skimming, and chopping through roots.


title: Pickaxe

text: Developed as agricultural tools in prehistoric times, picks have evolved into other tools such as the plough and the mattock. They also have been used in general construction and mining, and adapted to warfare.


title: Pickaxe

text: The Oxford Dictionary of English states that both "pick" and "pickaxe" have the same meaning, that being a tool with a long handle at right angles to a curved iron or steel bar with a point at one end and a chisel or point at the other, used for breaking up hard ground or rock.


title: Pickaxe

text: The term "pickaxe" is a folk etymology alteration of Middle-English "picas" via Anglo-French "piceis", Old French "pocois", and directly from Medieval Latin "picosa" "pick", related to Latin "picus" "woodpecker". Though modern picks usually feature a head with both a pointed end and an adze-like flattened blade on the other end, current spelling is influenced by "axe", and "pickaxe", "pick-axe", or sometimes just "pick" cover any and all versions of the tool.


title: Pickaxe

text: In prehistoric times a large shed deer antler from a suitable species (e.g. red deer) was often cut down to its shaft and its lowest tine and used as a one-pointed pick, and with it sometimes a large animal's shoulder blade as a crude shovel.


title: Pickaxe

text: The historic pickaxe was readily adapted to a weapon for hand-to-hand combat in ancient times. Over the centuries aspects of it were incorporated in various battle axes.


title: Pickaxe

text: A pickaxe handle (sometimes called a "pickhandle" or "pick helve") is sometimes used on its own as a club for bludgeoning. In "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, pick handles were used against migrant farmers, and Georgia governor Lester Maddox famously threatened to use a similar, more slender axe handle to bar blacks from entering a "white" restaurant in the heated days of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. A pick handle is officially used as a baton in the British Army.


title: Pickaxe

text: A normal pickaxe handle is made of ash or hickory wood and is about three feet long and weighs about 2.5 pounds. British Army pickaxe handles must, by regulation, be exactly three feet long, for use in measuring in the field. New variant designs are:


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: The 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis (also known as Sheraton Move) was a political crisis in Malaysia. It was caused by several members of the 14th parliament (MPs) changing party support, leading to the loss of a parliamentary majority, the collapse of three successive coalition governments, and the resignation of two Prime Ministers in less than 18 months. The crisis led to a 2022 snap general election and eventual formation of a coalition government.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: In February 2020, a development commonly dubbed the Sheraton Move, saw the fall of the ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition government and the resignation of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad after 22 months in power. They were replaced by Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition government led by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. Political instability continued after these changes throughout 2020 and into 2021, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This culminated with the resignation of Muhyiddin and his cabinet in August 2021, after 17 months in power. A few days later, Ismail Sabri Yaakob was appointed the ninth Prime Minister to replace Muhyiddin. The crisis triggered several early state elections and a 2022 snap general election.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: The crisis started with division in the ruling Pakatan Harapan coalition. Some sources suggest this began due to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad attempting to thwart the process of handing over power to his designated successor Anwar Ibrahim, as was promised ahead of his 2018 general election victory. Several MPs began discussing forming a new government by claiming majority seats and support in the Dewan Rakyat, the lower chamber of the bicameral Parliament of Malaysia, without going through a general election.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: They accomplished it through the withdrawal of the Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) from the Pakatan Harapan coalition and through the support of several MPs from the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) led by its deputy president Azmin Ali, who left the party. Prime Minister Mahathir then resigned, creating a power vacuum.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Malaysia's monarch, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Abdullah of Pahang, then met with all MPs and political party leaders to gauge their support for a new prime minister. He ultimately appointed the president of Bersatu, Muhyiddin Yassin, as the eighth prime minister. Muhyiddin then declared his coalition government as Perikatan Nasional.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Four states - Johor, Malacca, Perak and Kedah - also experienced changes in the respective state governments as Perikatan Nasional gained majorities in the separate state legislative assemblies. The Sabah State Legislative Assembly was dissolved, triggering the 2020 Sabah state election. Perikatan Nasional won the election and formed state government with Barisan Nasional and United Sabah Party.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Political instability continued after the change in government. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim announced he had majority support to form a new government in September 2020, but this did not materialise. Malaysia declared a State of Emergency in January 2021 amid the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, suspending parliament and all elections until August. The declaration and the government's handling of the pandemic destabilised the coalition in mid-2021; UMNO withdrew support for the government in disapproval and called for Muhyiddin's resignation. Parliament temporarily reconvened in late July, but expected debate over the emergency measures was blocked, and was then suspended again when COVID-19 cases were detected in the building. Despite this, opposition MPs attempted to enter parliament on 2 August after the State of Emergency ended, but were blocked by police. After losing majority support and attempts to regain it were unsuccessful, Prime Minister Muhyiddin and his cabinet resigned on 16 August 2021.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Four days later, UMNO's Vice President Ismail Sabri Yaakob was appointed prime minister by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong after receiving support from the most MPs. Ismail Sabri's government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Pakatan Harapan in an attempt for greater political stability. In 2021 and 2022, instability in state legislative assemblies triggered further elections in Malacca, Sarawak and Johor. The crisis culminated in an early general election in 2022 which produced a hung parliament; Anwar Ibrahim was eventually appointed as prime minister to lead a national unity government.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Pakatan Harapan (PH) is a coalition of four political parties, consisting of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (BERSATU), Parti Amanah Negara (AMANAH), and Democratic Action Party (DAP). Established in 2015, the coalition won the 2018 general election when it defeated the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government. BN has held power in the federal government for almost 60 years, making this the first transfer of power at the federal level to a different political party since Malaysia gained independence. Mahathir Mohamad, the chairman of BERSATU and president of Pakatan Harapan, was elected as the seventh Prime Minister of Malaysia, making him the world's oldest prime minister at age 92. He had previously served as the fourth prime minister from 1981 until 2003 under the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of Barisan Nasional. He left the party in 2016 and founded BERSATU to oppose the sixth prime minister, Najib Razak, whom he had repeatedly urged to resign after the 1MDB scandal.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Mahathir reconciled with his former political rival Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of PKR, to win the 2018 election. Anwar was previously Mahathir's deputy prime minister from 1993 to 1998 before he was dismissed and imprisoned from 1998 until 2004 under corruption charges. He was further imprisoned in 2014 under sodomy charges before receiving a royal pardon in 2018 from the 15th Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Muhammad V of Kelantan. Mahathir had promised to hand over the position of the prime minister to Anwar in two years.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Azmin Ali was the deputy president of PKR and previously served as Anwar's private secretary from 1993 to 1998. He was introduced to Anwar by Mahathir and was regarded as the latter's adopted son. He left Mahathir's UMNO in favour of Anwar's PKR (then called Parti Keadilan Nasional), becoming one of its founding members, after Anwar's first imprisonment. He was appointed by the Sultan of Selangor, Sharafuddin of Selangor over Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Ismail, as Menteri Besar of Selangor during a highly controversial political manoeuvre called the Kajang Move in 2014. After the 2018 general election, he reconciled with Mahathir, relinquishing his position as Menteri Besar to join Mahathir's cabinet as the Minister of Economic Affairs. Azmin's relationship with Anwar had since turned sour, with Azmin being accused of blocking Anwar from the prime ministerial position. It culminated at PKR's annual national congress in December 2019 where Anwar made vague remarks about treachery in his policy speech, which was believed to have been aimed at Azmin.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Muhyiddin Yassin is the president and a founding member of Bersatu. He was the deputy president of UMNO and had formerly served as the deputy prime minister from 2009 until 2015 under the sixth prime minister, Najib Razak. He was fired from his position after criticising Najib for his alleged involvement in the 1MDB scandal and was ultimately expelled from the party in 2016. He returned to the cabinet after the 2018 general election and became the Minister of Home Affairs.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Ismail Sabri Yaakob is a senior politician in United Malays National Organisation, part of the Barisan Nasional coalition that had governed Malaysia from its independence until their 2018 election loss. He had served as Leader of the Opposition after BN lost the 2018 election.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is the 8th president of United Malays National Organisation since 2018, part of the Barisan Nasional coalition that had governed Malaysia from its independence until their 2018 election loss. He had served as the 11th Deputy Prime Minister to Najib Razak from 2015 to 2018 after Muhyiddin Yassin was fired and expelled from UMNO.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: The Yang di-Pertuan Agong, also sometimes referred to as the King of Malaysia, is Malaysia's constitutional monarch. Its position is rotated between the nine Malay rulers every five years. He has the prerogative to appoint the prime minister based on who he believes holds the majority support from the parliament members, under Article 43 of the Malaysia's Constitution. The current and 16th Yang di-Pertuan Agong is Abdullah of Pahang who ascended the throne in January 2019.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: The global COVID-19 pandemic spread to Malaysia in late January 2020. The first major local outbreak occurred at a Tablighi Jamaat religious event in Kuala Lumpur in late February 2020. As the pandemic emerged as a global crisis by March 2020, including in Malaysia, it has had major economic, social and political fallout.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: The presidential council of Pakatan Harapan held a late-night meeting to discuss handing over power from Mahathir Mohamad to Anwar Ibrahim, who was coined as the "Prime Minister-in-waiting" as promised in the 2018 election. It was reported that Anwar conceded to Mahathir to allow the latter to choose his date to resign as the prime minister after APEC Malaysia 2020 in November. However, reports suggested that the meeting was tense and heated during the discussion about Mahathir's departure date. Later in May, a leaked audiotape of the meeting revealed Bersatu Youth chief Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman and PKR deputy president Azmin both warned Mahathir that he would be a "lame-duck prime minister" if he agreed to a timeline. Anwar's supporters from PKR believed that he should become prime minister based on the originally promised deadline of two years within Pakatan Harapan's election win on 9 May 2020.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Meanwhile, "Reuters" reported that Mahathir had planned to block Anwar from becoming prime minister, with the plan to be carried out after APEC. Mahathir had begun accepting defectors from Umno into his Bersatu party and started courting support of opposition parties like PAS with the intention of forming a unity government that would free him from his promise of handing over power to Anwar.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: However, Anwar's supporters' demand for Mahathir to pick a date for the handing over resulted in the latter's allies to move up their plan, which was carried out on 23 February.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On 23 February 2020, several political parties held extraordinary meetings. Bersatu at its headquarters at Menara Yayasan Selangor in Petaling Jaya, Muafakat Nasional pact of UMNO and Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) had a retreat in Janda Baik, Pahang, UMNO's supreme council at Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC), and Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS)'s members of the parliament (MPs) in Kuala Lumpur. Azmin Ali, the deputy president of PKR and the Minister of Economic Affairs, also held a meeting with several lawmakers from the party and twenty others at Sheraton Hotel in Petaling Jaya, amidst rumours that the formation of a new governing coalition was being undertaken. The event was widely reported on local media as "Langkah Sheraton" or the Sheraton Move.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Azmin and his faction in PKR went to the Istana Negara in the evening to seek an audience with the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. Leaders from five other political parties; Bersatu's Muhyiddin Yassin, also the Minister of Home Affairs, UMNO's Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, PAS's Hadi Awang, GPS's Abang Johari Openg and Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan)'s Shafie Apdal were also in attendance. It was speculated that the leaders were there to brief the Agong about the recent political development; formation of a new coalition government and to declare their support for a new prime minister, effectively blocking PKR's president Anwar Ibrahim from the position. After the meeting, several opposition party leaders, including UMNO's Ismail Sabri Yaakob and PAS's Hadi Awang, joined Azmin's supporters at Sheraton Hotel.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: In a Facebook Live broadcast of a night prayer session at Anwar's residence, Anwar said that someone had informed him that a "treachery" was committed involving "former friends from Bersatu and a small group from PKR". Later, Azmin, in a statement, claimed that his action was to protect Mahathir, who was forced to choose a date for the transition of power during Pakatan Harapan presidential meeting on 21 February. The statutory declaration (SD) presented to the Agong was to cement support for Mahathir, not to elect a new prime minister. He further said that the real traitor was the faction that tried to usurp Mahathir.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On the morning, Anwar Ibrahim; the deputy prime minister, Wan Azizah Ismail, also Anwar's wife; the president of Amanah, Mat Sabu; and the secretary general of DAP, Lim Guan Eng, met Mahathir at his residence to seek clarification regarding the incident. Anwar later stated that he was satisfied with the meeting outcome, as Mahathir had clarified that he had nothing to do with the pact to make a new coalition government.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: PKR held a press conference at 2 pm where its general secretary, Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, announced that Azmin and the Minister of Housing and Local Government, Zuraida Kamaruddin, also the vice president of PKR, had been dismissed by the party. Saifuddin explained that they were expelled due to their actions on 23 February which was against the party's principle regarding the position of prime minister. Azmin later announced that he would be forming an independent bloc at the parliament along with Zuraida and other nine MPs. They had decided to exit the party following his expulsion.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: In the afternoon of 24 February, the prime minister's office confirmed that Mahathir had sent his resignation letter to the Agong. Half an hour later, he also announced his resignation from his position as chairman of Bersatu after Muhyiddin declared the party's withdrawal from Pakatan Harapan coalition. The Agong tried to convince Mahathir against resigning, but the latter insisted. The Agong then accepted his resignation and appointed him as the interim prime minister until a new prime minister is chosen. The Cabinet of Malaysia was dissolved, per Article 43(5) of the Constitution of Malaysia. Pakatan Harapan lost its majority in the parliament after Bersatu and Azmin Ali's-led PKR faction of eleven MPs withdrew from the coalition at 2 pm. A representative of the palace then announced that the Agong would interview all 221 MPs, excluding Mahathir, to weigh their support for prime minister candidates. The interview sessions were held on 25 and 26 February, with 90 MPs on the former and 131 MPs on the latter.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: At 9 pm, Bersatu leaders held an emergency meeting at its headquarters to discuss the party's future direction. Members of Bersatu rejected Mahathir's resignation as the party's chairman and pledged their support to be the prime minister. The party's secretary-general Marzuki Yahya said that the Bersatu's supreme council members were unanimous in their support for Mahathir.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On 25 February, Agong summoned 90 MPs to have an audience with the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. Starting from 2:30 pm, the Agong spend two to three minutes interviewing each MPs. Following the first round of interviews, UMNO and PAS revealed that they have withdrawn their supports given earlier for Mahathir to continue as prime minister, and had instead called for parliament dissolution. It was previously reported that as all political factions voiced their support for Mahathir, he was about to establish a "unity government" that the two parties could not agree with. Annuar Musa, UMNO's secretary-general, said the basis of negotiations with Mahathir was that UMNO and PAS would lend their support to form an alternative coalition without DAP. Therefore, both PAS and UMNO declared their support for a snap election instead.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: An emergency Pakatan Harapan presidential council meeting was held at PKR's headquarters in Petaling Jaya at night. Pakatan Harapan parties; DAP, PKR and Amanah invited Mahathir to the meeting in order to restore the previous government but Mahathir did not attend the joint meeting.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On 3 February 2021, Mahathir claimed that when the Pakatan Harapan MPs made their statutory declaration in front of the Agong, they did not name him as their candidate. Anwar had convinced PH MPs that he had sufficient support from Sabah and Sarawak MPs and PH MPs to have a majority to become Prime Minister. Mahathir said that "only DAP, Amanah, and his faction of his PKR" supported Anwar. Anwar gets 92 supporters while Mahathir managed to get only 62. "When Muhyiddin was named Prime Minister he did not have majority support. But upon his appointment he was able to offer places in his cabinet to the members who supported me. They crossed over and Muhyiddin achieved a majority of two", Mahathir wrote on his blog.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Interim Prime Minister Mahathir addressed the nation at 4.45 pm on the political situation. He began his speech by apologising to Malaysians for the current impasse before confirming speculation that he wanted to form a unity government, saying the new administration would focus on national interests instead of political parties. Mahathir denied allegations of being obsessed with power, and reiterated his refusal to work with UMNO. Mahathir made no mention of Anwar Ibrahim or the agreement to pass the leadership baton to Anwar as agreed with 21 February meeting. Mahathir instead said the decision was up to the Dewan Rakyat.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Pakatan Harapan announced that they were nominating PKR president Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister following the previous night's meeting, despite publicly declaring support for Mahathir earlier, following Mahathir's televised speech. DAP lawmakers said Pakatan Harapan decided against a non-partisan "Mahathir government" as this would not be beholden to any party or coalition, which would give Mahathir free rein to do as he wanted.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: In the morning of 27 February, Mahathir once again went to the palace for an audience with the Agong. The content of the meeting was unknown although it was said to discuss a formation of new cabinet. In the afternoon, the secretary general of Bersatu, Marzuki Yahya, confirmed that Mahathir had withdrawn his resignation as the chairman of Bersatu. In an unrelated press conference in the evening of 27 February, Mahathir revealed that the Agong "cannot find anyone with a distinct majority" to be elected as the Prime Minister and that a special session of parliament would be held on 2 March to address the predicament. If all else failed, he hinted that there would be a snap election.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: A special Conference of Rulers meeting was held on the morning of 28 February at the Istana Negara to discuss the current political climate in the country, with all state rulers or their crown princes in attendance. They were also joined by General Affendi Buang, the Chief of Defence Forces, and Abdul Hamid Bador, the Inspector-General of Police.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof, the speaker of the Dewan Rakyat, contradicted Mahathir's previous announcement regarding the special sitting of the parliament. Ariff said that he had received a letter from Mahathir stating that the government agreed for a sitting to be called on 2 March but it did not adhere to parliamentary Standing Orders. In the evening, the palace released a statement saying that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong will call the leaders of political parties who have members in the parliament for an audience, to allow them to nominate their candidates for the position of prime minister to break the impasse. It also confirmed that the Agong had not found a candidate who has the confidence of the majority of the MPs to form a new government.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Bersatu then released a statement announcing their support for the party's president, Muhyiddin Yassin as the 8th Prime Minister, backed by the 26 Bersatu MPs and 10 others led by Azmin. Further 60 MPs from UMNO, PAS, Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) also announced their support for Muhyiddin. All the Muafakat Nasional MPs had also signed the new statutory declarations proposing Muhyiddin to be the next prime minister. Muhyiddin Yassin's aide also confirmed that Azmin Ali and 10 other former PKR MPs have officially joined Bersatu. However, Bersatu Supreme Council member Kadir Jasin claimed he was never invited for a discussion or informed about Muhyiddin's nomination.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Bersatu Youth chief Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman declared that he would never work with those involved in corruption to form a government, referring to UMNO. Bersatu's youth wing Armada also posted a statement to say that it would continue to back the party's supreme council's decision in its meeting on 24 February to support Mahathir as prime minister, suggesting a split within Bersatu over Mahathir and Muhyiddin's candidacy.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: In the morning of 29 February, the Pakatan Harapan presidential council held a meeting to discuss the current political situation. They then announced their full support for Mahathir as the 8th Prime Minister, thus reversing the coalition's nomination of PKR president Anwar Ibrahim for Prime Minister. Following the announcement, Mahathir expressed confidence that he had the majority support to form the government and could be appointed as the prime minister for the third time after receiving assent from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. In the afternoon, Anwar, as a representative of Pakatan Harapan went to Istana Negara to inform the Agong of the nomination changes.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Meanwhile, Bersatu's Muhyiddin Yassin and his allies including party leaders from UMNO, PAS, Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), Parti Bersatu Rakyat Sabah (PBRS), and Homeland Solidarity Party (STAR) had an audience with the Agong. He also announced that his coalition consisting of Bersatu, UMNO, PAS, PBRS, GPS, and STAR will be called Perikatan Nasional. The new coalition claimed that they have majority support in parliament to elect a Prime Minister and to form a government.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Meanwhile, in Sarawak, Chong Chieng Jen who is vice-chairperson of DAP as well as chairman of DAP Sarawak, said that they are willing to make concessions and work together with the GPS state government. The main purpose for this was to preserve the PH federal government. Chief Minister, Abang Abdul Rahman Johari Abang Openg snubbed Chong's peace gestures to the state coalition. He recalled past remarks by the DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, condemning that the state will go bankrupt in the next three years. PKR announced that GPS MP Richard Riot Jaem had defected to join the party. However, he had denied the allegation, stating that he is still a member of GPS component party, Sarawak United Peoples' Party (SUPP), and had merely voiced out his support for Mahathir.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: In the evening, the royal palace released a statement saying that Muhyiddin, in the Yang di-Pertuan Agong's judgment, is likely to command the confidence of the majority of the MPs and is to be appointed as the 8th Prime Minister of Malaysia. The swearing-in ceremony will be held in the morning of 1 March in the Istana Negara.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Late in the night, Mahathir, in a final attempt to challenge Muhyiddin's appointment, published a list of 115 Members of Parliament who he claimed was supporting him and enclosed the list with a letter to be delivered to the Agong following a Pakatan Harapan meeting. Notable MPs who were in the list are Mahathir, his son Mukhriz Mahathir and 4 other Bersatu MPs, members of Warisan, Jeffrey Kitingan of STAR, Maximus Ongkili of Gabungan Bersatu Sabah (GBS), Baru Bian and Jonathan Yasin who were previously in Azmin's bloc. However, the list was disputable as some MPs had denied backing Mahathir and some were ambiguous about their allegiance. Furthermore, Shamrahayu Abd Aziz, an academic and an expert on the constitution also stated that any statutory declaration signed after the Agong's announcement will not make a difference, and the legal way to challenge Muhyiddin's appointment is through a vote of non-confidence in the Dewan Rakyat.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Minutes before the swearing ceremony of Muhyiddin, Mahathir said in a press conference that the Istana Negara had refused to grant him audience to prove that Pakatan Harapan commanded the support of the majority of the Dewan Rakyat. He expressed disappointment towards Muhyiddin, who he alleges had been working on forming a government without Pakatan Harapan "for a long time". Mahathir also revealed that the confusion over the status of his chairmanship of Bersatu allowed Muhyiddin to appoint himself as the chairman, which he claimed was an illegal move.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Muhyiddin Yassin was sworn in as the eighth prime minister in front of the Agong at the Istana Negara on the morning of 1 March 2020.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On the morning of 2 March, Muhyiddin arrived at the Perdana Putra building, which functions as the Prime Minister's Office, to begin his official duties as the Prime Minister. Muhyiddin held meetings with Chief Secretary Mohd Zuki Ali, General Affendi Buang, the Chief of Defence Forces, and Abdul Hamid Bador, the Inspector-General of Police. Later that night, Muhyiddin addressed the nation in his first televised message as the prime minister. In his address, he told the nation that he had no prior intention to become the prime minister and denied being a traitor but due to the political turmoil in the country, he had stepped up in order to avoid prolonging the crisis further. He also reassured that he will only choose individuals who are clean, virtuous and of high calibre to be in his cabinet. Before ending his message, he thanked former prime minister Mahathir for his service to the country.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Within weeks of Muhyiddin becoming Prime Minister, the COVID-19 pandemic had emerged as a serious crisis in the country and globally. A Tablighi Jamaat religious event in Kuala Lumpur that occurred during the political crisis had been a superspreading event, with the outbreak rapidly spreading across the country. The political instability at the time is thought to have hampered the country's ability to respond. Muhyiddin announced that international borders would close and announced a strict Movement Control Order, putting the country into lockdown from March 18.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On 4 March, the Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat, Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof announced that the Dewan Rakyat sitting which was originally scheduled to start on 9 March has been postponed to 18 May at the direction of Muhyiddin. The action was taken to allow the new prime minister to form his cabinet and for the newly appointed ministers to familiarise themselves with their ministry before the parliament sitting. However, PKR MP Wong Chen criticised Muhyiddin's move to delay opening of parliament, saying that it is a clear sign of weakness as he is unable to form a cabinet in a swift manner.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Muhyiddin on 10 March had announced a Perikatan Nasional (PN) alliance cabinet he had picked from a mix of seasoned politicians, technocrats, stalwarts and close allies as ministers but without a deputy prime minister position which was replaced with 4 senior minister for the first time instead.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: In a Facebook Live session on 7 May, Anwar Ibrahim announced that he would be the new Leader of the Opposition for Pakatan Harapan in the new session of Parliament.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Speaker Mohamad Ariff announced on 7 May that he had received a letter on 1 May from Warisan leader Shafie Apdal seeking to table a motion of confidence in Dr Mahathir to show that he could command a majority in the Dewan Rakyat. The Speaker replied in a letter to Shafie that it was not in line with Article 43 of the Federal Constitution because it questioned the power of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to appoint the prime minister. On the other hand, Mahathir seeks a motion of no confidence against Muhyiddin as prime minister through a letter addressed to Ariff on 4 May. On 8 May, the Speaker accepted Dr Mahathir's motion and it will be debated when Parliament resumed on 18 May.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: The speaker announced on 13 May that on the directions of the government, the parliament sitting on 18 May will only convene just for the opening speech by the Agong opening the new session, with no meeting after the speech. This meant that Mahathir's no confidence motion would not be even debated. Secretary to the Dewan Rakyat, Riduan Rahmat who was appointed on 22 February two days before the Sheraton Move, was demoted to Dewan Negara management secretary on 14 May. A source alleged that the secretary had attempted to keep the motion of no-confidence against Muhyiddin by Mahathir and Shafie a secret, leading to his demotion. In response, both Mahathir and Shafie along with Pakatan Harapan leaders condemned the move in a joint statement and accused the Perikatan Nasional government of being afraid to face the opposition in parliament.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: The Agong addressed the political crisis by recounting that he tried to convince then-PM Mahathir not to resign but had no choice but to accept it as the latter insisted on resigning. The Agong ended his speech by calling on politicians not to drag the country into any further political crisis when there was already a COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The new seating arrangement in the Dewan Rakyat suggested that the Perikatan government had 113 seats in the Dewan Rakyat, after Masir Kujat of Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) clarified that he was not supporting the government, and remained as opposition in federal and state levels. In a press conference attended by Mahathir, Shafie Apdal, Mukhriz Mahathir, Lim Guan Eng and Mat Sabu following the parliamentary seating, Mahathir insisted that Bersatu is still a component of Pakatan Harapan as its Supreme Council never decided to exit the coalition. In a leaked audio tape of the supreme council meeting in February, Muhyiddin had allegedly given Mahathir a week to decide on the party's direction as its chairman. "But before the one-week period, he took action as if he was not in PH. This goes against the party constitution and (any) approval by Bersatu ("sic") Supreme Council," said Mahathir. Notably, neither Anwar nor any representatives of PKR attended the press conference.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Mahathir Mohamad, Mukhriz Mahathir, Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, Maszlee Malik and Amiruddin Hamzah were expelled from Bersatu on 28 May. They decried the move as illegal and reflective of Muhyiddin's insecurities and dictatorial leadership. In a joint statement, they disputed the interpretation of their decision not to join Muhyiddin's government benches in Parliament as joining another party, which results in automatic revocation of memberships, according to the Bersatu party constitution. However, Muhyiddin defended the moves and insisted that the five members who were sacked as having breached the party constitution by sitting with the opposition in Parliament.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Speaker Mohamad Ariff was removed from his position on the next parliamentary sitting on 13 July by a margin of two votes, 111 to 109 and controversially replaced by the just resigned Electoral Commission (EC) chairman Azhar Azizan Harun as the Dewan Rakyat's new Speaker. Azhar's appointment took place amidst a shouting match between Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional MPs, after he was sworn in without a voting session by lawmakers, similar to the process undertaken to remove incumbent Speaker. However, in his press conference with the media later, Azhar insisted that his appointment was legitimate, saying that there is no need for a voting session in the Lower House, as there was only one nominee. The Deputy Speaker, Nga Kor Ming announced his resignation in solidarity with Speaker Ariff. With the resignation of Nga, Prime Minister Muhyiddin announced Azalina Othman Said to replace Nga, making her the first female Deputy Speaker.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On 23 September, at a press conference at noon, Anwar Ibrahim, Leader of the Opposition, Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition and People's Justice Party (PKR), speaking to reporters, announced and claimed that he had commanded a "strong, formidable, convincing majority" and further claimed that the Perikatan Nasional (PN) federal administration led by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin "has fallen". However, Anwar also revealed that his planned audience with the Agong earlier on 22 September had been postponed due to the hospitalisation of the Agong to receive treatment for food poisoning and sports injury at the National Heart Institute (IJN) on 21 September. When Anwar Ibrahim met the Agong on 13 October, he presented the number of 120 MPs to the Agong but did not submit the names of all the MPs supporting him.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: The Sabah state election took place on 26 September, which led to a Perikatan Nasional victory. After calls to allow postal voting or stop the election were dismissed over concerns on the spread of COVID-19, the vote was held in-person with certain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The election led to a major COVID-19 outbreak in Sabah which later spread to other states across the country.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: By-elections in Bugaya constituency, Sabah and Gerik constituency in Perak were both suspended at the request of Prime Minister Muhyiddin in December 2020 by invoking states of emergency over rising COVID-19 cases. Bugaya was thought to be the epicentre of the third wave of COVID-19 in Sabah. Muhyiddin had requested a nationwide state of emergency, but this was rejected by the Agong.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On 13 December 2020, UMNO veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah held a joint press conference with his longtime rival Mahathir Mohamad, where he publicly declared his rejection of the 2021 budget tabled by Muhyiddin and both men declared the PN government illegitimate. Razaleigh did not attend the subsequent budget vote held on 14 December, which was won by the government with 111 ayes against 108 nays.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: With building dissatisfaction within the party ranks over a number of issues, MPs from UMNO began to publicly call for withdrawal from the PN coalition government. Minister of Federal Territories Annuar Musa, who was firm in his stance of "no Anwar, no DAP" with regards to political cooperation, was sacked on 5 January 2021 as Barisan Nasional Secretary General. Annuar's successor Ahmad Maslan publicly called for a general election and labeled ongoing court cases against leading UMNO figures as "cruel". Annuar himself later alleged in a press conference that a number of UMNO MPs backed by UMNO President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi are planning on leaving Perikatan Nasional to form a coalition government with DAP and possibly other PH component parties. The statement was denied by both former Prime Minister Najib Razak and DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: Machang MP Ahmad Jazlan Yaakub held a press conference to personally and publicly announced his withdrawal of support for the PN government and resignation as Chairman of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) and declared he was no longer aligned with PN as an MP although his coalition is, on 9 January 2021, resulting in further collapse of the PN administration led by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin after PN lost the majority support by commanding the support of only 110 out of 220 MPs (at least 111) in the Dewan Rakyat, Parliament. His withdrawal of support is the second one from his coalition after the withdrawals of support of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (Gua Musang MP). Jazlan cited Bersatu's repeated attempts to "bully" UMNO as the primary reason for withdrawing support.


title: 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis

text: On 12 January, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong consented to a national emergency proclamation under Article 150 of the Malaysian Constitution to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, effective from 12 January 2021 to 1 August 2021. With the proclamation, parliament is officially suspended and no snap elections can be held. Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz held a press conference on the same day to publicly and personally announce his withdrawal of support, declaring he was no longer aligned with PN as an MP although his coalition is, resulting in further collapse of the PN administration led by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin after PN lost the majority support by garnering the support of only 109 out of 220 MPs (at least 111) in the Dewan Rakyat, Parliament. His withdrawal of support is the third one from his coalition after the withdrawals of support of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (Gua Musang MP) and Ahmad Jazlan Yaakub (Machang MP). Nazri told the press that the proclamation is only further evidence that Muhyiddin is unable to prove he commands majority support in parliament if a confidence motion was held.