Nasarudin goes into ‘hiding’

Humayun Kabir

IPOH (The Sun): Where is Nasarudin? This seems to be the pertinent question surrounding Bota assemblyman Datuk Nasarudin Hashim who is believed to have gone into “hiding” after crossing over to Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) from Umno.

Perak Umno is desperately trying to arrange a meeting between him and Umno deputy president Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Abdul Razak.

When contacted yesterday, many state PKR leaders had sudden amnesia over Nasarudin’s contact numbers, passing the buck instead to other party leaders.

PKR state liaison chairman Ismail Yusof said Perak Umno was very desperate to contact Nasarudin and they are “searching high and low for him”.

According to Ismail, this has forced Nasarudin to go “underground”. He is expected to resurface in about three days to put matters in their right prospective.

Nasaruddin has completely cut himself off from all means of communication by changing his mobile number and other contact numbers, Ismail added.

Nasarudin, 58, had been quoted in an English daily as saying that his decision to jump ship was due to political developments and the people’s support for the Opposition during the general election and the current situation in Umno.

On Monday, Perak Mentri Besar Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin said three more BN assemblymen are set to cross over to Pakatan Rakyat (PR) as they were unhappy with the present political scenario in BN.

Nizar also refuted Najib’s claims that no other BN state assemblymen will be joining PR in the future, as discussions by PR with the three BN assemblymen had indicated otherwise.

This latest political development has put the Perak BN in a spot. Since the March general election when the state fell to PR, BN had made many claims that many state PR assemblymen had wanted to crossover to BN to wrest the state from PR.

Perak Umno liaison charirman and former mentri besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Tajol Rosli had even said the state would fall into BN hands by the end of August last year.