DATUK Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s daughter has taken to social media to lament that UMNO would be inherited by those who are rude and have no manners.
Yesterday (Aug 16) Datuk Nurulhidayah had shared a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation in which someone had said, “If you meet Zahid and Lim Guan Eng, you spit on Zahid first, and then on Guan Eng.”
A participant of the group chat had responded to the remark with several thumbs up emojis. However, their names and numbers were covered.
“Leaders come and leaders go, but what’s for sure is that UMNO will be inherited by those who are rude and have no manners,” the Wanita UMNO executive councillor wrote.
“I hide your names so you will not be disgraced, just like how Allah is testing us with tests that, insya-Allah, we can overcome.
“May whatever step you take not affect your children and your future generations.”
In the aftermath of the six state elections on Saturday (Aug 12) which saw UMNO walking away with only 19 seats across Selangor, Negri Sembilan, Penang and Kelantan, there had been renewed calls for party reform, including for Zahid to take responsibility by stepping down as UMNO president.
It should also be noted that the party had also recorded its worst performance by failing to wrest or retain any seats it had contested in Kedah and Terengganu.
However, it managed to secure 14 seats in Negri Sembilan and two seats each in Penang and Selangor. In Kelantan, the party only won the Galas state seat.
In response to calls for his resignation, Zahid had vowed to march on and “do more” to help the party regain confidence, adding that this was not the first time an UMNO president was urged to resign following a poor electoral showing.
The Barisan Nasional (BN) chairman also said the party’s dismal performance at the state polls should be the collective responsibility of the party’s leadership.
Not enough to reform UMNO
However, several analysts had argued that Zahid’s resignation alone will not be sufficient for UMNO to reclaim lost Malay support or for the party to change its image overnight.
FMT reported National Council of Professors senior fellow Dr Jeniri Amir as saying that there is more than needs to be done than just Zahid’s resignation and that the party leadership would “probably need to change the top five Supreme Council members as well”.
Jeniri also told the news portal that UMNO will also need at least two years to restore its battered image.
He said Zahid reneging on his “No Anwar, No DAP” promise by leading BN into a unity government with Pakatan Harapan (PH) had also impacted the party’s image heavily.
This was after he had at the party’s 2021 annual general assembly rejected altogether the possibility of Umno and BN co-operating with either PH or Bersatu, he said.
However, Universiti Sains Malaysia’s (USM) Dr Azmil Tayeb believes that Zahid’s resignation would be a good first step towards reforming the grand old party.
Similar to how Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had stepped down following a relatively poor showing in 1999 and was replaced by Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Azmil said BN had bounced back by winning more than 90% of the seats in the 2004 general election due to this change of leadership.
Under Abdullah, more fondly known as Pak Lah, UMNO won 109 of 219 seats in the 11th general election (with BN taking 198 in total), the peak of the Malay party’s dominance of national politics. – Aug 17, 2023
