PETALING JAYA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has refused to accept that the Arabs donated RM2.6 billion (S$920 million) to Prime Minister Najib Razak for his election campaign.

The former prime minister of 22 years said that Arabs were not that generous and that he never managed to raise a single dollar from Arabs for the Malaysian International Islamic University or for the Oxford Islamic Centre.

"Certainly I don't believe it and neither can the majority of Malaysians if we go by the comments on the social media. The world had a good laugh," Tun Mahathir said in a posting on his blog, chedet.cc, on Monday.

"Who in the world would donate US$700mil to the Malaysian Prime Minister? Even Obama could not raise this amount for his Presidential bid," he added.

Dr Mahathir said the claims that the money was for elections was not logical as he had needed less than RM10 million for each of the five elections he presided over.

"Why do you need RM2.6billion plus or 2,600 million ringgit. Is it to bribe politicians and civil servants, or to rig the elections? That would not be right, much less legal," he said.

Dr Mahathir said that what Datuk Seri Najib was doing was unprecedented and that the people are at a loss.

He added that the prospect of Mr Najib continuing to rule the country is depressing and that the Malaysia where elections can even see opposition parties winning whole states will be no more.

"Democracy is dead. It is dead because an elected leader chooses to subvert the institutions of Government and make them his instruments for sustaining himself. There is no more democracy for anyone to undermine," he said.