Nazri: We need to cool off

BN is in shock and needs a “cooling off” period to come to terms with losses in Chinese votes in the 13th general election.

Umno supreme council member Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz said many leaders were being “human” when they shot off their mouths to blame the Chinese for switching sides with Pakatan Rakyat.

“You think Najib (Abdul) Razak is a robot or a human being? We are hurt as we did so much, gave everything, yet they voted against us.

“Although I won Padang Renggas, I lost all the Chinese areas even though I had been taking good care of them,” he told The Malay Mail in an interview last week.

Nazri said Umno had gone into the elections by being inclusive.

“So what happened? We feel betrayed, disappointed. Can’t we express our feelings?

“We are human. Allow us two weeks to get over this shock and we will do a post-mortem and find out what more needs to be done for the Chinese and everyone else.”

He said there must be a stop to witchhunts and all promises made must be delivered.

“If we believe in general elections then we must respect the wishes of the people.

“We must also acknowledge that to win elections we need all the races.”

Nazri said he was confident the Chinese would return to BN and agreed one should also consider it was a message to the MCA as the component party won only seven parliament and 11 state seats.

“If you want to punish MCA, whack MCA in their seats, why take it out on the rest of BN?”

He believed the Malay swing towards Pakatan was more among the urbanites.

“This is the tragedy of education. You keep them stupid, so they will keep you in government or you educate them and risk having them go against you. I will still choose the latter.”

Nazri believed Najib was still the right person to lead the country, reminding he was largely leading former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s administration.

“Now he has his mandate, judge him in 2018.”

He urged those baying for his blood to allow him to continue leading the nation, adding he would meet Umno leaders to ask them to continue to support Najib.

Nazri reminded the party that although BN lost seven parliamentary seats, the party had done better, winning 88 parliamentary and 244 state seats compared to 79 parliamentary and 239 state seats in 2008.

“This was the mother of all elections and Najib had done well. We won back Kedah and Perak, too, so give him due credit.”

- The Malay Mail