FORMER Selangor menteri besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali has revealed that his successor Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari was at one point not loyal to party president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Speaking at the Keluar Sekejap podcast yesterday, Azmin said this when quizzed about whether he hoped Amirudin would lead a change of government in Selangor after the events of the Sheraton Move in 2020.
“He was involved… He was in our discussions, way back before Sheraton Move… He was clearly not pro-Anwar, because he knew who appointed him as menteri besar,” the former deputy PKR president told Keluar Sekejap co-hosts Khairy Jamaluddin and Shahril Hamdan.
However, Azmin was cut off before he could elaborate and moved on to explain how Amirudin had taken over the helm of the Selangor state government.
“I proposed to His Royal Highness (Selangor Ruler Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah) to consider Amirudin as menteri besar (in 2018),” Azmin recalled.
“Alhamdulillah His Royal Highness consented. I was happy because (Amirudin) was a young leader with fresh vision and ambition.
“I told (Amirudin) that as a menteri besar, you need a political base, or people will disturb you. Hence, I gave him the position of Gombak PKR division chief and the chair of Selangor PKR.”
Azmin said he gave Amirudin three key positions on a silver platter simultaneously for him to be in a good and stable position to administer the state.
Amirudin was made menteri besar after Azmin stepped down from the position after his appointment as the economic affairs minister in then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s cabinet in 2018.
It is also interesting to note that this is not the first time Azmin had spoken out about his former protégé.
Recall that in an interview with Malaysia Now on July 5, Azmin had expressed regret for nominating Amirudin as his successor, saying that Amirudin had “failed to continue the agenda of caring for the people” and that “Selangor’s economic performance is going down”.
“Perhaps, I made the wrong choice at the time, but basically I thought that Selangor needed a young and progressive menteri besar who could continue the policies that had succeeded so far. Sadly, I was mistaken,” Azmin was reported as saying to the news portal.
During the 15th general election (GE15), Amirudin, 43, had unseated Azmin as the MP for Gombak, where the latter had represented for three terms.
As the Selangor Perikatan Nasional chief, Azmin is slated to go head-to-head with Amirudin again in the upcoming state elections. – Aug 9, 2023
