It has been eight months after he was sacked as deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin and the veteran Umno man could not help but lament his current predicament.
Albeit jokingly, Muhyiddin said his attendance at an event held in Kota Tinggi, Johor, tonight was void of the usual scores of outriders and the beating of the traditional kompang.
“Today, there’s not even one kompang,” he said, to laughter from the some 1,500 people comprising of the village’s locals.
“It’s okay, I no longer hold posts, those who play the kompang can sleep peacefully. But it’s not that I really want all that.”
In his lengthy speech, he said he could not be silent about problems surrounding Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s brainchild 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).
“I had to give my view (as) this is a very serious matter, I can't keep quiet.
“But then I think - I'm quite stupid. If I had kept quiet, I would still be deputy prime minister today,” he said, to more laughter from the crowd.
He also reminisced how he was interviewed by Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia when he was “popular”.
“Nowadays, they can't even look at my face. Utusan and (Umno-linked) Berita Harian are not here,” he said, gesturing to the crowd.
“The ones who are here are Malaysiakini, blogger Din Turtle and (now defunct) The Malaysian Insider.
“If you read Utusan, all the bad stories about Muhyiddin and (former Kedah menteri besar) Mukhriz (Mahathir) are there, it's as though we are robbers,” he said.
'No one attacked me when I helped oust Pak Lah'
Muhyiddin said the hostility against him for speaking out against Najib today differs from when he played a role in ousting fifth premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Muhyiddin said he was instrumental in getting Abdullah replaced by Najib in 2009.
But this, he said, was because he was simply worried that BN would fare worse in the next election under Abdullah’s leadership.
Yet at the time, there was never a question of sacking him from his post of international trade and industry minister, he said.
“(No one said) sack Muhyiddin, why did he ask Abdullah to resign. No one said that against me and no one said that if Abdullah resigned then the BN government will fall.
“The one who was changed was the prime minister, which coincidentally was replaced by Najib,” he said.
Muhyiddin is on a campaign with former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad and several opposition leaders to demand for Najib’s resignation.
He was sacked from his deputy prime minister’s post after he became increasingly vocal against Najib’s handling of the 1MDB fiasco and was suspended from the number two post in Umno last month. --Mkini
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