Majority of Umno members against working with DAP - Shahidan

 

The majority of Umno members are opposed to the party working with DAP in the government but have no choice but to play along with party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

This is according to former Umno strongman Shahidan Kassim, who is now aligned with Perikatan Nasional (PN).

"If you conduct a survey, the majority of Umno people don't want to work with DAP. Umno has lost the honour it had as its original struggle was 'No DAP'.

"You have to understand that DAP believes in the 'Malaysian Malaysia' concept, but Umno fights for the Malay-Muslim cause. That's why when I joined PN, we had an extraordinary win," he told Utusan Malaysia in an interview.

The Arau MP compared his more than 23,000-majority win in the constituency in the 15th general election (GE15) to Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi scraping through with a mere 300-plus majority in the Bagan Datuk parliamentary seat, to stress how Umno has lost its appeal among voters.

Despite his clashes with Zahid, Shahidan (above) maintained that the latter was still a "good friend" of his.

"We even hugged each other when we met recently, he's a good friend. Only our principles differ. The situation may have been different if I was still with Umno."

Asked if he still has lost love for Umno, Shahidan said he only loved PAS and PN now, because Umno was "no longer what it used to be".

Shahidan parted ways with Umno after he was not fielded by the party to contest in the Arau parliamentary seat in GE15. He contested under the PN ticket and won. - Mkini