COMMENT | It's very clear now that interim prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is not a man who acts with honour.

I had heard from insiders that he would step down after Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit even before he first announced it. Then he himself said several times that he would keep his promise of handing over the premiership to Anwar. These two bits of information prompted me to doggedly maintain the stand that he would do as he said. Until last week.

Now I see he probably wasn't counting on keeping that promise. I was foolish to have believed it.

I don't know for sure if he was directly involved in the recent coup to get rid of the Pakatan Harapan government and install a backdoor one, but I can guess that he certainly knew about it. And knowing about it, he should have done the honourable thing of stopping it before it got to crisis point. He should have protected his Harapan government.

After that, he should have also done the honourable thing of sticking with his Harapan allies instead or resigning and abandoning them to the wolves waiting and slobbering at the back door...