Umno’s ‘scripted’ meet fell apart quickly

Party President and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak was literally forced by sentiments in the party to abandon his belligerence and offer a truce of sorts to his estranged deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin.

COMMENT

The jury may no longer be out on the just-concluded Umno General Assembly. The meet is seen as having fizzled out the moment party President and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak was forced, in conjunction with his closing address, to offer a truce of sorts to his estranged deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin.

The sacked Deputy Prime Minister had nothing to lose. Najib walked up to Muhyiddin and extended his hand in a spontaneous, perhaps impulsive, act of reconciliation. Muhyiddin responded but did, in remarks carried later by the media, query the truce gesture and wondered aloud what it meant. Clearly, Muhyiddin has rejected Najib’s olive branch since any truce cannot be an empty gesture. That would be meaningless for the party.

The entire Umno Annual General Assembly had been scripted and stage-managed to create the public impression that it was Najib’s moment of triumph. Wanita Chief Shahrizat Abdul Jalil screeched at DAP while Najib blamed former party President and former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as the bane of Umno.

It appears the script fell apart towards the end when it emerged that participants were not too happy that Muhyiddin was continuing to be victimized by the party leadership for advocating that closure be sought on the twin mega scandals. Najib even issued a veiled threat in desperation that party rebels, in the wake of the assembly, would be fighting the party and not him if they continued to remain hostile to him. That — fighting the party — would be true if Najib’s legitimacy was not being questioned.

The Edge and the international media — the Sarawak Report, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, among others — all credited a government investigation team as the source of the leaks for their numerous reports on the twin mega scandals. Najib swore that he would take on the media concerned, and cited the WSJ in particular, to Court. The people are still waiting. Instead, Najib went after Muhyiddin, among others.

The level-headed among Umno leaders were clear that Najib should have taken Muhyiddin’s stand on the twin mega scandals seriously and given it every respect that it deserved. Muhyiddin’s stand, party members noted, was clear and unambiguous viz. Najib to give up his position as head of the 1MDB Advisory Board, the police brought in and the 1MDB Board made accountable for the RM42 billion — perhaps RM55 billion — 1MDB Scandal, and Najib go on leave while the special Task Force, the MACC, the police and Bank Negara proceed with investigations on wrongdoing on the twin mega scandals.

It dawned on Umno delegates, as the general assembly drew to a close, that Najib was in fact part of the problem and should be sacrificed by the party while Muhyiddin, while not saying that he was the solution, did imply that his five-point step was the only way going forward to bring closure to the twin mega sandals.

The bottomline is that if Umno goes along with Najib, it would may be be party to illegalities under the guise of acting against those engaging in activities detrimental to parliamentary democracy and/or seeking to overthrow a democratically established government.