Najib: Party and leader are one

If we bolster the leader, we strengthen the party and succeed in the general election, Umno told

GOPENG: Umno president Najib Razak said today that the party and the leader cannot be separated and frequent criticism of the leader would weaken the party.

“If we bolster the leader, we will strengthen the party. When the party is strong, we will succeed in the general election. Thus, this is the ingredient for our success,” he said when addressing a large gathering of several thousand on a visit to the Gopeng RTC today.

Najib said now was not the time for party members to be quarrelling among themselves. “Now is the time for us to unite and look at the national transformation agenda to achieve the status of a developed nation,” he added.

He said the Barisan Nasional had built an institution which could not be matched by other parties.

He said the challenges that the party faced were different compared to the past, when there was no social media. “In the past if there was no newspaper, there was no news. But today, just write in a blog, write on Twitter, on Facebook, they can become viral. And these are the challenges facing us, how do we tackle all these,” he said.

Najib said that after becoming Prime Minister on April 3, 2009, he had to face a more energised opposition, particularly in Perak. “We were then worried what would happen to Perak under the opposition, but thanks to the spirit of consensus, we succeeded in taking over,” he said.

In the 13th general election, many people had predicted that BN could not retain Perak, where power changed hands after after three assemblymen returned to BN.

Najib said when he took over as prime minister, he was faced with the challenge of rehabilitating Malaysia which was also affected by the world economic depression. He had introduced an economic stimulus package and last year Malaysia recorded an encouraging economic growth rate compared to the other countries, especially in Asean.

He pledged to carry out policies introduced by Dr Mahathir Mohamad, whose Vision 2020 plan had called for Malaysia to become a developed nation.

- BERNAMA