UMNO “implosion” over what is right and wrong has taken more than four years to occur

The UMNO “implosion” over what is right and wrong has taken more than four years to occur.

I had asked last month whether there was nobody in UMNO who dared to say that UMNO should not seek the return of Najib Razak as Prime Minister as his years as Prime Minister when Malaysia became “kleptocracy at its worst” worldwide was nothing to be proud of.

Now it appears that I was both right and wrong.

The account by the sacked UMNO Supreme Council member, Tajuddin Abdul Rahman that a group of senior and influential leaders in UMNO had gathered in his house to broker a deal that would see president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi step down amicably as early as 2020 but the UMNO Deputy President Mohamad Hasan and former Prime Minister Najib Razah had backed out.

Tajuddin claimed that the former Negeri Sembilan menteri besar was “intimidated” by Zahid, his senior in the party hierarchy.

It is for Mohamad Hassan to explain why he backed out of the plan but Najib’s presence at Tajuddin’s house was a surprise, as after the discovery of the seeming popularity of his “Malu Apa BOSSku” persona, he has kept alive his dream of again becoming the Prime Minister of Malaysia, whether the 10th or 11th Prime Minister.

I was wrong in implying that nobody whether at UMNO leadership or membership level had heeded the warning of the fourth UMNO President and third Prime Minister Tun Hussein Onn at the 1979 UMNO General Assembly that Malaysia will be destroyed if its leaders were “dishonest, untrustworthy and corrupt” but right that such warnings would not sway the UMNO leadership from supporting Zahid or even Najib’s ambition to return as the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

That leaves MCA and MIC out in the cold.

In the past four years since the 14th General Election, no MCA or MIC leader had expressed regrets or concern at the MCA and MIC support before May 2018 for the mega multi-billion 1MDB scandal or the shocking development s where Malaysia was equated with “kleptocracy at its worst”.

In fact, in the Malacca and Johore state general elections, MCA and MIC leaders and candidates were depending on Najib’s seeming popularity of “Malu Apa BOSSku” persona to get votes, regardless of whether Malaysia had been tainted with the infamy of “kleptocracy at its worst”.

There are UMNO leaders who are beginning to see what is right and what is wrong, something which MCA and MIC leaders and Ministers have yet to show.