Only Dewan votes matter, not claims of support, says analyst

 

An analyst has questioned a claim by Ismail Sabri Yaakob of the number of Barisan Nasional MPs supporting Muhyiddin Yassin. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: Any numbers being tossed about over support for the prime minister would be meaningless outside of Parliament, says a political analyst.

Jeniri Amir, a fellow with the National Council of Professors, said that even Deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s claim of 40 Barisan Nasional MPs backing Muhyiddin Yassin is in question.

He said recent reports had put a lower figure of 30 MPs supposedly backing the prime minister through statutory declarations.

Even then, he told FMT, statutory declarations can change within a day, which means that the number would keep on evolving.

“So, we can’t definitively come up with a figure on how many MPs still support Muhyiddin,” he said. Numbers stated outside of a parliamentary vote were meaningless.

“They can speak out against him outside or take part in demonstrations on the street, but the bottom line is that it has to be proven in the Dewan Rakyat. There are no two ways about it,” he said, in a reference to opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s renewed claim of Muhyiddin losing his majority support.

Jeniri said the splits among the different factions in Umno made it difficult to truly ascertain who is no longer backing Muhyiddin unless it was sorted out in Parliament through a vote of no-confidence.

“Otherwise, they will just keep on talking. I mean, we’ve been talking about this (Umno MPs withdrawing support for Muhyiddin) for so long.”

BN has 42 MPs in the Dewan Rakyat: 38 from Umno, two from MCA, and one each from MIC and PBRS.

Although Ismail said 40 Barisan Nasional MPs back Muhyiddin, Kelantan Umno chief and Machang MP Ahmad Jazlan Yaakub has joined the chorus of calls for the prime minister to resign, as have Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Najib Razak and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

This would leave only 38 MPs from Barisan Nasional still backing Muhyiddin.

But a party source told FMT yesterday that only 19 BN MPs had turned up for a meeting with Ismail, instead of 40, and some MPs may be distancing themselves from Muhyiddin after tensions rose between the prime minister and Istana Negara.

Another analyst, Oh Ei Sun of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said Ismail’s affiliation with Muhyiddin, having accepted the post of deputy prime minister, means that Ismail’s political credibility has been tarnished.

He said whether Umno members will back Ismail would depend on the kind of “political and other resources” that will be distributed to the party’s rank and file.

“Let’s not forget that Umno is also a party which runs on what we would call the gravy train” in the decades of incumbency before losing power in 2018. - FMT