{"id":9300,"date":"2021-01-17T01:00:27","date_gmt":"2021-01-17T01:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/week-asia\/politics\/article\/3117967\/shades-despot-muhyiddins-halt-malaysias-democracy-has-familiar"},"modified":"2021-01-17T01:00:27","modified_gmt":"2021-01-17T01:00:27","slug":"shades-of-a-despot-muhyiddins-halt-of-malaysias-democracy-has-familiar-feel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/17\/shades-of-a-despot-muhyiddins-halt-of-malaysias-democracy-has-familiar-feel\/","title":{"rendered":"Shades of a despot? Muhyiddin\u2019s halt of Malaysia\u2019s democracy has familiar feel"},"content":{"rendered":"Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin\u2019s decision this week to suspend democracy for the first time in over half a century may have forced a timeout of the furious, months-long efforts by his rivals to topple him by hook or by crook \u2013 but by no means has it quelled the disquiet surrounding his leadership.A case in point was a scathing radio interview on Friday by his predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad.The 95-year-old, ousted as prime minister in a political coup last February, lamented that\u2026\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/week-asia\/politics\/article\/3117967\/shades-despot-muhyiddins-halt-malaysias-democracy-has-familiar\">South China Morning Post<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin\u2019s decision this week to suspend democracy for the first time in over half a century may have forced a timeout of the furious, months-long efforts by his rivals to topple him by hook or by crook \u2013 but by no mean&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":936,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9301,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9300\/revisions\/9301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}