Will Zahid sack Ismail Sabri from UMNO if ROS’s decision not favourable to party?

WILL UMNO president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi sack Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob from UMNO if the Registrar of Societies (ROS) does not approve the UMNO constitutional amendment to further postpone UMNO party election until after the 15th general election (GE15)? 

UMNO secretary-general Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan said yesterday that apart from complying with the ROS and hold its internal election as required, UMNO has a ‘Plan B’ if the ROS rejects the UMNO constitutional amendment, although he declined to reveal what ‘Plan B’ is. 

I fully agree with the Johor opposition leader and DAP deputy secretary-general Liew Chin Tong that UMNO has become the source of political instability causing the nation to undergo two government changes and now it wants to destroy a third government in four years. 

Liew said Malaysians must unite to reject the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional coalition if they want a better future. 

I understand Liew’s disappointment that the new UMNO leaders had not rejuvenated the party following its electoral defeat in 2018 but instead chose to fan hatred towards the elected Pakatan Harapan government. 

This is most obvious in the recent faux pas committed by UMNO deputy president Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan who highlighted that there is no change in the stand by UMNO/BN on the monstrous mega multi-billion-dollar 1MDB financial scandal, which caused Malaysia to be regarded by the world as “kleptocracy at its worst”. 

Just like in the years before the 14th General Election in 2018 when no UMNO/Barisan Nasional minister/leader dared to condemn the 1MDB scandal, the same position continues after 2018, especially in the last two years when UMNO ministers were in two governments since the infamous Sheraton Move conspiracy in February 2020. 

UMNO has broken into two camps – the “Court Cluster” and the “Cabinet Cluster” but they all together in the “1MDB Cluster”! 

In 1979, at the UMNO General Assembly, the then prime minister and UMNO President Tun Hussein Onn warned that Malaysia will be destroyed if its leaders were “dishonest, untrustworthy and corrupt” and expressed the hope that the RM100 mil Bank Rakyat scandal would be a “bitter lesson to other government institutions and agencies including companies and subsidiaries set up by the Government”. 

However, Hussein Onn’s warning 43 years ago fell on deaf ears and will be proven true before Malaysia’s Centennial if there is no reset of Malaysia nation-building policies and principles to get out of the present trajectory of a kleptocracy in the next three to four decades. 

It is tragic that there seems be no Hussein Onn in the top UMNO leadership today. 

Who will step forward in UMNO to be the Hussein Onn of today before UMNO and Malaysia are destroyed? 

The next obvious question is whether the 22-month Pakatan Harapan government is the cause of Malaysia’s decline in the last half-a-century? 

It is not. In fact, if the Pakatan Harapan government had its five-year mandate and had not been sabotaged and toppled by Sheraton Move after only 22 months, a solid start would have been made to reset the nation-building policies and principles of  the country and to reform national institutions. 

Clearly, UMNO and Barisan Nasional are not only the cause of Malaysia’s present political instability, they are responsible for Malaysia losing out to more and more countries in the last half-a-century. 

Is Malaysia a lost cause and is fated to end up as a failed state like Sri Lanka before Malaysia’s Centennial in the next three to four decades? 

I do not think so. We must not give up hope and yield to despair and hopelessness. – July 13, 2022 

 

Lim Kit Siang is a DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri. 

The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia. 

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