TAN Sri Annuar Musa has slammed Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim for claiming that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Perikatan Nasional (PN) chairman Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had conspired to ban UMNO in 2019.
Annuar said he had checked with Mahathir and Muhyiddin and both had denied hatching such a plot to ban the party.
“Anwar’s claim that he had objected to such a move is false. He and (UMNO president) Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi are simply trying to sell such a narrative for the sake of boosting UMNO support Pakatan Harapan and DAP,” the former UMNO secretary-general said in a statement last night (July 18).
“Furthermore, knowing Mahathir’s leadership style, if it’s true he wanted to ban UMNO (when he was prime minister) no one could have stopped him, especially not Anwar, whom Mahathir had specifically omitted from handling government affairs.
“And if it were true that Anwar was the one who had ‘saved’ UMNO from being banned, why didn’t he have Zahid’s support to become prime minister in 2020 following the events of Sheraton Move?”
Annuar noted that Zahid had instead backed Mahathir to remain as prime minister before signing a statutory declaration to support Muhyiddin to take over the top post.
“In fact, rather than banning UMNO, it was Muhyiddin who brought the party into the government and had even handed over the top post to UMNO and Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob who later became the prime minister,” he added.
The former Ketereh MP went on to claim that the PH chairman was trying to win over the support of UMNO members in the lead-up to the Aug 12 state polls but pointed out that UMNO members would not be so easily swayed by Anwar’s narrative.
“UMNO members themselves know who is actually using and killing the party,” he added.
On Saturday (July 15) Anwar, while urging UMNO members not to betray the party by voting for PN and Bersatu, had also alleged that Zahid is being targeted because he knew of the opposition’s plan to ban the party in the past.
In his speech at the Jelajah Madani and the launch of the state Unity components machinery in Guar Chempedak, the PKR president further claimed that Perikatan Nasional (PN) is training their guns on Zahid because of the latter’s firm stand in refusing to give way to pressures from Bersatu when they were in power.
“But now, they have singled out Zahid in their attack because they want to convince UMNO members to swing their vote to PN,” Anwar had said.
“We must use all the strengths we have in PH and BN in this state elections to teach the lesson to those who want to ban our party.” – July 19, 2023
Main pic credit: Utusan Malaysia
