Sorry Mahathir Mohamad, your mug can't endear you to voters familiar with you this time.

New rules for publicity campaign

On Wednesday, April 24, the Malaysia Electoral Commission (EC) announced new rules for campaign materials for this year's general elections.

Other than the president and the deputy president, pictures of other officials of the contesting parties are not allowed.

This means that even though Mahathir is the chairman of Pakatan Harapan (PH) -- the main opposition party facing off against the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition -- his face is not allowed on any campaign material during the campaign period.

However, the 92-year-old former prime minsiter's face is still allowed on posters promoting his candidacy in the Langkawi parliamentary seat.

EC says new rules are for the voters' sake

According to Bernama, EC chairperson Mohd Hashim Abdullah said that the new rules are to ensure that voters are not confused by the campaigning that involves different contesting parties.

However, this has been rejected by the opposition as yet another tactic to rein in the veteran ex-leader's influence in this year's GE14.

According to Channel NewsAsia, electoral reform group BERSIH 2.0 also questioned the timeliness of the new rules.

There were no problems featuring other party members' faces in campaign materials in the previous general elections.

Friends turned enemies

Previously, the opposition party Mahathir helped establish, Parti Pribumi Bersatu, was deregistered just two days before Parliament was dissolved.

Failure to meet a 30-day deadline to hand over certain paperwork was cited as the reason.

Although Mahathir helped Malaysia's current prime minister Najib to power in 2009, the pair fell out in 2015 over the scandal involving state fund 1MDB.

A domestic jury had cleared Najib of all wrongdoing.

Since then, in a major turnaround, Mahathir had joined forces with jailed opposition leader Anwar in a bid to remove Najib from office.

Top image via Mahathir/Facebook