Zahid to let Umno members decide if Tajuddin's claims true or false

Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said it is up to his party’s members to decide the veracity of claims made by Pasir Salak MP Tajuddin Abdul Rahman.

This is after Tajuddin alleged Zahid’s “no Anwar-no DAP” stance was a lie as the latter had sought Umno MPs to sign statutory declarations (SD) supporting PKR president Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister.

“For me, what was stated by (Tajuddin), whether it is false or has slivers of truth, I leave that to the Umno members, especially the grassroots, to evaluate,” he told reporters in Kuala Lumpur today when asked about the SD allegation.

Tajuddin was sacked as an appointed member of Umno’s supreme council last week.

This led to a tell-all presser yesterday, in which he alleged that Zahid, himself, and several others had signed SDs supporting Anwar as prime minister in 2020.

Responding to this, Zahid stressed that the crux of the matter was that Tajuddin was no longer a supreme council member.

Pasir Salak MP Tajuddin Abdul Rahman

In late 2020 and early 2021, Anwar had claimed that he had the numbers to form a new government that was “convincing, formidable and strong”, implying that there were defections.

However, the claim became a subject of ridicule when the support failed to materialise.

Zahid’s statement in September 2020 also lent credence that Anwar was seeking defections from BN.

By April 2021, there were allegations that Anwar called Zahid after the Umno delegates’ assembly to congratulate him.

In hindsight, Anwar told an interview in April that the support fell apart because he refused to compromise on certain principles, such as by declining to give free out-of-jail cards to politicians facing criminal trials in court.

He said that the removal was in line with his authority as Umno president to appoint and remove the appointments of unelected supreme council members.

Zahid also took a jab at the Pasir Salak MP, saying the latter had “begged” to be on the supreme council after losing in the Umno vice-presidents race in 2018.