PAS' decision to forge a third force in Malaysian politics will ultimately dilute votes from the Malay community and hand Umno victory, said Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

"Regardless of whether PAS works with Umno or not, PAS will reduce Pakatan Harapan's (potential number of) votes as well as their own votes.

"Harapan and PAS will lose and BN will win. This is PAS' struggle. It is not for race and religion.

"Their purpose is to weaken the Malays," wrote Mahathir on his blog today.

The former premier said history has shown that PAS performs poorly at the polls whenever they go it alone and conversely, do relatively well if they have strong allies.

But this fact was unlikely to sway PAS members, because of their "fanaticism" for their party and their leaders...