De-politicise UMNO Deputy Presidency: Division Chief

The post of UMNO deputy president should be de-politicised so that it would no longer be perceived as a platform to gain the country's top premiership, an UMNO division leader said.

Pulai UMNO division chief Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed said the time had come for the party leadership to seriously reconsider the norm of appointing the deputy president as deputy prime minister, and later, prime minister.

"Maybe, it is time we just have a deputy president, and not neccesarily for the deputy president to become the deputy prime minister or prime minister. We should just focus on the PM (prime minister). (A) Deputy president doesn't need to be PM," he told Bernama here.

He said by doing so, it would defuse the situation where one can create a perception that there are two leaders at any time when in actual situation, there should be only one leader, namely the prime minister.

"The problem is that people tend to tie the No. 2 to (being) the next prime minister. This creates a two-leader situation and everyone would try very hard to push up their leader so that they can have something in return later," he said. (Bernama)