Ku Li, we know what you did last August

MP SPEAKS Umno information chief Annuar Musa probably thinks of himself as ‘walking on water’ now that he has pulled off the Kelantan Declaration which neutralised Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a man who for the past 40 years was the permanent prime ministerial aspirant.

Razaleigh returned to Umno in 1996 from Semangat 46. He was among those being considered to fill Anwar Ibrahim’s vacancy as deputy prime minister after the latter was sacked in September 1998. Following the 2008 general election which saw Barisan Nasional losing its two-thirds majority, Razaleigh began engaging opposition leaders and BN MPs from Sabah and Sarawak in the hope to be prime minister in the event of a leadership vacuum.

Muhyiddin Yassin was sacked on July 28, 2015 and in the first two weeks of August 2015 Razaleigh was busy engaging various stakeholders in the hope to replace Najib until it was foiled by new Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi on Aug 16, 2015.

Annuar Musa should have just checked with Zahid before he embarrassed himself.

Tengku Razaleigh essentially gave up his prime ministerial aspiration by aligning himself with Najib. We will not speculate about his motives and what he gets in return.

It was foolish for Annuar Musa to claim that Tengku Razaleigh had no involvement in the statutory declaration (SD) that endorsed the latter as prime minister and instead claiming that the document was likely the work of DAP and Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Just as it was entirely unnecessary for Tengku Razaleigh to deny knowledge of his own attempt to replace Najib Abdul Razak as prime minister.

As pointed out by DAP parliamentary whip and MP for Seremban Anthony Loke, the statutory declaration was meant to be an alternative to the no-confidence vote in Parliament against Najib. It was a Tengku Razaleigh initiative which the DAP MPs did not sign.

DAP has 37 MPs and we are open to discuss ideas of grand coalition to remove Najib and to institute reforms based on shared principles for democracy, justice and good governance.

But the DAP did not initiate the move to make Razaleigh the prime minister, nor did we sign on to anything to that effect.

Razaleigh should at least be truthful and honourable to acknowledge his earlier move to remove Najib, even though he has now gone to the dark side.

We know what you did last August!

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LIEW CHIN TONG is DAP national political education director and MP for Kluang. -Mkini