Umno throwing Najib under the bus

Raja Sara Petra

It looks like many of the top Umno leaders are now trying to distance themselves from Najib Tun Razak and are throwing him under the bus. This is not only typical to Umno but is the characteristic of most politicians in general, which is a normal human instinct — that is to associate themselves with the winner and not with the loser.

They say Najib is damaged goods, old history, no longer relevant, and much more. They said that about Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in 1988 and about Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 2003. But then Abdullah bounced back to become Prime Minister in 2003 while Mahathir came back as Prime Minister 15 years later in 2018.

The saying is, a politician is not yet finished until you lay him or her in his grave. So in that sense Najib is far from finished. As some have rightly pointed out, Najib is a victim of negative perception, which is why Umno and Barisan Nasional lost GE14. While everyone knows that, what is puzzling is why did Umno allow that to happen?

There are those in Umno who wanted Najib to fall. But what they did not realise is by allowing Najib to fall that also resulted in Umno and Barisan Nasional falling as well. This, they did not expect. They thought if Najib fell then they could take over Umno. Well, it worked, except that the Umno they have taken over is an Umno in opposition and struggling to keep its head above water.

Let this be a lesson to these people. When your team captain loses, the whole team loses, and this includes you as well. Umno kept quiet from 2015 to 2018 and did not come to Najib’s aid. They thought they would play safe so that if Najib falls then only Najib will fall and not them. Well, GE14 has proven how wrong they were. So stop trying to push the blame entirely to Najib when you are all also to blame.