Pakatan Harapan's most junior member, Bersatu, may have won only 13 seats on May 9, but its chairperson Dr Mahathir Mohamad said his party was key to the coalition's victory.

"If not for Bersatu in the 14th general election, (former prime minister) Najib (Abdul Razak) would have won," he said in a recent interview.

Mahathir argued that without Bersatu, Najib would have lost the popular vote at the elections, but because of the voter disparity between rural and urban seats, BN would still win enough seats to...