(The Malaysian Insider) - PKR deputy president Azmin Ali today dismissed Raja Petra Kamarudin’s attack on him and the party, calling the self-exiled blogger irrelevant after being away from Malaysia for over two years.

Raja Petra, better known as RPK, had called Azmin “deceitful” and unable to shed the Umno culture, saying in an interview published yesterday there will be an internal revolt in PKR if the Gombak MP succeeds Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim should the de facto party leader be jailed for sodomy.

“Raja Petra is irrelevant. It is the rakyat, not Raja Petra, who will determine the direction of the party."

“He has been intimately disconnected from the country. He does not know what is happening,” the Selangor PKR chief said.

Raja Petra had also told Umno’s Utusan Malaysia last weekend that Opposition Leader Anwar was morally unfit to be prime minister as Malaysians could not accept a homosexual to lead the country.

The Selangor prince, who fled the country in 2009 after alleging that Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his wife were responsible for the murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shariibuu, did not explicitly call Anwar a homosexual but said there was no room in Malaysia for someone who is gay and wants to become PM.

He also said he was “90 per cent” sure the man in the Datuk T sex video was Anwar, and that many of the latter’s friends believed in the authenticity of the video.

Azmin repeated today PKR’s claim that Raja Petra was now “hired by Umno” as he was no longer exiled in Britain but now holidaying in Phuket and giving interviews in Singapore.

“He is so near to Malaysia, he can enter the country anytime,” he said, implying that a deal has been struck between the blogger and the ruling Barisan Nasional.