Bare denials and naked truths

Umno cannot afford the crisis that Muhyiddin's resignation will cause.

COMMENT

By Ahmad Bistamam

If there is one thing you can believe in Malaysian politics, it is this: when something is denied, you can consider it as true. And it does not matter whether it is the government or the opposition that is doing the denying.

• It was denied that Anwar Ibrahim would be acquitted of the sodomy conviction in September 2004. It was denied that he would be acquitted of the second charge of sodomy in January 2012.
• It was denied that Nurul Izzah Anwar was getting a divorce.
• It was denied that the 13th General Election was going to be held in May 2013.
• It was denied that Kak Endon, the wife of previous prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was dying of cancer. It was denied that Abdullah would marry Jeanne Danker. It was denied that he would resign and that Najib Tun Razak would take over as prime minister.
• It was denied that the Kajang state assemblyman would resign to make way for Anwar. It was denied that his wife would take his place after he was disqualified from contesting with the reversal of his acquittal. It was the denied that the Kajang Move was a prelude to the ouster of Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim.

If we go on in this vein, we’ll be listing down 1,000 denials of “rumours” that turned out to be truths over the last 15 years.

Now it is being denied that Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin wants to retire from public life. However, former information minister Zainuddin Maidin has just written to reject this denial, saying Muhyiddin has wanted to retire for quite some time now.

So why does he not resign and why the need to deny it?

Mad scramble

Basically, it is because his resignation will create a vacuum and there will be a mad scramble for the Umno deputy presidency and the deputy prime minister’s post. This would be okay if there were a strong number three who can take over the number two slot. However, there is no one who stands out from among the three number threes. They are all about equally strong.

And Umno not only has to worry about the three number threes. It also needs to worry about those not from not among these three, including the Umno Youth leader.

Umno has gone through this twice before. It survived, but became weaker. If this happens again, the party might go down and never come up again.

So Muhyiddin needs to stay on even if he would rather retire. Umno cannot afford a fight involving four, five or six aspirants for the number two slot.

There is another problem. Najib is a weak leader and some of the warlords in Umno, Dr Mahathir Mohamad included, want him out. But they cannot push him out because Muhyiddin does not want to become prime minister.

What if they push Najib out and Muhyiddin refuses to take over? Worse still, what if they push Najib out and Muhyiddin also resigns? There would now be two vacancies.

If that happens, Umno will be dead and buried in a week. The party called Umno, which has dominated Malaysian politics for almost 70 years, will be history.

Of course, that may not be a bad thing. But can you imagine Barisan Nasional handing over power to Pakatan Rakyat and then PKR, PAS, and DAP fighting over who should be the new prime minister?

Most people assume that Anwar will take the top post if Pakatan takes over. Are they so sure?

Ahmad Bistamam is a FMT columnist