SAIFUDDIN ABDULLAH TO JOIN PKR? DISGUSTED WITH NAJIB, OTHER UMNO MODERATES MAY FOLLOW SOON

KUALA LUMPUR - Speculation is rife former Umno minister Saifuddin Abdullah, who currently heads Prime Minister Najib Razak's prized Global Movement of Moderates (GMM), will be joining PKR, the party founded and led by jailed Opposition chief Anwar Ibrahim.

"Idealism," was the curt reply from a political source, when asked why Saifuddin was willing to shift out of a cushy well-paying job into the rough-and-tumble world of the political opposition in Malaysia.

The source also told Malaysia Chronicle that PKR was due to make the shock announcement this week.

Slap for 'false moderate' Najib

Saifuddin's switch will indeed be a slap in the face for Najib, who considers himself a leading moderate despite being accused of taking Malaysia backwards into an age of authoritarianism and despotism.

Some in PKR believe Najib's recent rampant use of the Sedition Act as well as the anti-terror SOSMA law to jail and silence his political critics was the breaking point for the 54-year-old Saifuddin.

"He is not the only one in Umno who is feeling uneasy about arresting members of the Opposition and now even Dr Mahathir's men just because they raised questions about 1MDB and Najib's own alleged corruption," said a senior PKR leader.

More Umno moderates to jump ship

It is understood that several more Umno 'bigwigs' will jump over to the reformist party founded by Anwar in 1998.

For criticizing Najib's use of racial politics to drum up support from the Malay electorate, Saifuddin has come under fire from Najib's stalwarts.

Click here to read more at WHY IS NAJIB CAMP SO EAGER TO SACK SAIFUDDIN? Mouthpiece Utusan talks up case to sack ex-minister

Just today, former premier Mahathir Mohamad held a landmark joint press conference with other influential Umno power-brokers Tengku Razaleigh, the Gua Musang MP, and Muhyuddin Yassin, the former deputy prime minister sacked by Najib for questioning his handling of the RM42 billion 1MDB debacle.

The object of the presser was to announce a united front against Najib and to denounce his abusing the SOSMA law to charge former Umno Batu Kawan division leader Khairuddin Abu Hassan and lawyer Matthias Chang for allegedly sabotaging the country's economy after the duo lodged several police reports overseas to complain about Najib's and 1MDB's alleged corruption.

"They are defining sabotage according to their own needs," said Dr Mahathir, now a trenchant critic of the Najib administration.

Feather in the cap for PKR

Saifuddin's entry will be a big morale booster for PKR, which has been on the decline since Najib threw Anwar into jail on trumped-up sodomy charges earlier this year.

It will be a feather in the cap for Anwar's wife, Dr Wan Azizah Ismail, who is now in charge of running PKR.

Saifuddin raised eyebrows when he attended the recent unveiling of new Opposition pact Pakatan Harapan

Saifuddin was elected to Parliament in the 2008 election,[and was immediately appointed as a deputy minister, being cited as a future ministerial prospect. He had previously been the Secretary-General of the Malaysian Youth Council.

After the election he was appointed as a deputy minister, and was the Deputy Minister for Higher Education in Najib Razak's first term as Prime Minister.

During his ministerial tenure, Saifuddin was one of the more moderate and liberal-progressive politicians in Najib's administration. He criticised his own government's handling of the Bersih 2.0 rally in 2011, in which over 1,600 protestors were arrested on the streets of Kuala Lumpur.

In early 2013, he also stood up for a student who was humiliated by a government-linked panellist at a student forum at the Universiti Utara Malaysia.

Saifuddin's ministerial career was cut short by the 2013 election, when he lost his Temerloh parliamentary seat to a PAS candidate, Nasrudin Tantawi, by 1,070 votes.

Saifuddin has written four books on Malaysian politics.[9] After leaving Parliament he joined the University of Malaya as a research fellow, but in 2014, he resigned his position in protest when Malaysia's Education Ministry forced a well-respected professor at the university to resign, reportedly due to research findings critical of the government. - Malaysia Chronicle