Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak thinks the new cabinet is good, but the people do not seem to share the same view, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.

"I think the prime minister thinks it is a better cabinet.

"But I read blogs, Facebook comments and I don't see that (the people think so). If you read all these, you will know what the people think," he said.

Asked what he thinks about the new cabinet , Mahathir replied: "I don't think."

He also said it was Najib's right to axe Muhyiddin Yassin as his deputy, and that cabinets are reshuffled "all the time".

Mahathir himself changed deputies three times when he was prime minister.

His first deputy prime minister Musa Hitam resigned, and was replaced by Abdul Ghafar Baba, who was then displaced by Anwar Ibrahim.

Anwar was later sacked, in 1998, and then imprisoned on corruption and sodomy charges, and replaced by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

On Najib's new number two, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Mahathir said Zahid was just as eligible as anybody else.

"I think he is as eligible as anybody else. He had the highest votes for the position of vice-president," he said.

Mahathir was speaking at a press conference after launching the Prince Court Medical Centre's new liver centre in Kuala Lumpur.

The sweeping changes made by Najib are currently a hot topic in the country.

Even the Prince Court Medical Centre chief executive officer Dr Chong Su-Lin could not resist refering to it in her speech at the launch.

"You only have one liver, if it fails you don't have a back-up. You can't do a cabinet reshuffle," Chong said to laughter from the audience.

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