Umno PRETENDS all is fine between Najib & Muhyiddin, blames 'instigators' for internal turmoil

KUALA LUMPUR - Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s recent outburst over Putrajaya’s handling of debt-laden 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) was just his personal opinion and not a sign that he does not support Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Umno leaders said today.

Senior members of the Barisan Nasional (BN) lynchpin party played down the deputy prime minister’s tirade, which was caught on video during a party training session last week — claiming that it does not diminish his support for Najib who is also Umno president.

“No need for DPM to pledge his loyalty lah,” Pulai Umno chief and MP Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed told Malay Mail Online when contacted.

“You got so many batu apis, people who use the government, instigators who like to see Umno as a whole going into turmoil. I hope these people would stop,” he said, using the Malay term for agents provocateurs.

Yesterday, a video of Muhyiddin saying the government should sack the entire board of debt-laden 1MDB or face being booted from power was uploaded on a blog called APANAMA.

Not long after the video went viral, former Umno minister Tan Sri Zainuddin Maidin urged the party to call for an emergency meeting to discuss the episode and decide if Muhyiddin should face action for his remarks.

Zainuddin claimed that Muhyiddin’s remarks had undermined Najib’s leadership and proved that “Umno is not united to face Dr Mahathir’s attacks, 1MDB and the current political and economic crisis”.

Abdul Rahman Dahlan

Former deputy Education Minister Dr Puad Zarkashi also hit out at Muhyiddin, calling the latter “lazy” in a Facebook post for allegedly failing to deal with the deplorable conditions at a school in Keningau, Sabah.

Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan today argued that the only difference between the party’s top-two leaders was on the punitive action that should be taken on 1MDB’s board, with Muhyiddin preferring to have all board members of the state-owned fund sacked.

“On record, both of them have said that it is a concern and that it has an effect on the party and the government. Both of them want this issue to be resolve. Both of them want investigations to be done.

“They only have some differences on the decision. Like in the video, DPM wants (the) 1MDB board to be sacked but the PM’s position is that he will only take action after investigations are completed. That’s the only difference,” he said.

Pahang Wanita Umno chief Datuk Rosni Zahari denied that Muhyiddin’s remarks were a sign of a rift within the party, arguing that Muhyiddin is right to demand for the sacking of 1MDB’s board if it is true that the fund had been mismanaged.

Nur Jazlan Mohamed

She also took a dig at Dr Puad, chastising him for “very unbecoming” behaviour ostensibly to justify his appointment as head of the federal government’s Special Affairs Department.

Najib has been under pressure of late over his handling of the 1MDB fiasco, with his predecessor Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad openly demanding that the former step down for allowing the fund to accumulate some RM42 billion in debt to date from the time it was incorporated in 2009.

Most recently, the fund was pilloried after the Finance Ministry ― which Najib also heads ― declared that the US$1.103 billion (RM3.91 billion) that 1MDB redeemed from its offshore account in the Cayman Islands into a Singaporean bank is not in actual cash but assets.

This added to public anger over an expose on RM188.5 million paid to 1MDB by pilgrimage fund Lembaga Tabung Haji for 1.5 acres in the Tun Razak Exchange, and also some RM3 billion invested by the Employees Provident Fund and Retirement Fund Inc in the controversial fund. - Malay Mail