“I don’t think he thinks I am fit enough to be decorated like that,” he told reporters at the PKR headquarters here.
“I am a very angry man, You can see how angry I am. I will burn you. I am always burning things,” he said.
He said the Sultan could have presented the awards to him “because he thought I deserved it”.
“But now I am going to fire the whole country, so I think I don’t deserve it any more.”
The former prime minister however refused to say whether giving up the awards was a sort of protest against the Selangor ruler, or if a similar move would be made in the case of royal awards from the Johor sultan, who had also criticised him.
Mahathir and his wife, Dr Siti Hasmah Ali, returned their awards last week in the wake of strong criticism against the former leader by Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah.
The sultan had first criticised Mahathir following the latter’s speech during Pakatan Harapan’s “anti-kleptocracy” rally in October, in which he referred to Prime Minister Najib Razak as a “descendant of Bugis pirates”.
The Selangor royal household are descendants of the Bugis ethnic group.
Mahathir has maintained that his remarks were only against Najib and not the Bugis community.
The sultan further criticised and condemned Mahathir in separate interviews published by The Star and Utusan Malaysia.
“He is just angry and his anger will burn the whole country,” he told The Star earlier this month.
The late Selangor sultan, Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah, had bestowed the Seri Paduka Mahkota Selangor (SPMS) award on Mahathir in 1978.
In 2003, a month before his retirement as prime minister, Sultan Sharafuddin awarded him with the Darjah Kerabat Yang Amat Dihormati (DK).