A catch-22 for Najib
It’s risky for him to oust Muhyiddin, but neither can he afford to keep him as his deputy in the party.
Scott Ng, Free Malaysia Today
The bell has begun to toll for Muhyiddin Yassin. Since he was sacked from the Cabinet, the Umno Deputy President has been relentlessly criticising Prime Minister Najib Razak over the RM2.6 billion donation and over 1MDB’s finances. His stirring the pot at Umno divisional meetings has, inevitably, roused the ire of the powers that be.
According to political analyst Shahbudin Husin, Muhyiddin’s sacking from Umno is now a forgone conclusion. At the Umno Supreme Council meeting scheduled for September 9, a senior member will initiate the vote and, with three quarters of the council voting in favour, Muhyiddin will be expelled from the party.
According to Shahbudin, Najib’s logic dictates that should Muhyiddin be allowed to remain in Umno, he will always be a threat. By making Muhyiddin an outsider to Umno, Najib thinks he will deny him the right to claim that he is speaking out in the best interests of the party.
There is no doubt that as the man sitting closest to the seat of the Umno President, Muhyiddin is a huge bugbear to Najib. His act of going against Najib paints him as a hero to the Umno grassroots. Some Umno divisions, perhaps emboldened by Muhyiddin’s brave words, have invited him to speak at their delegate meetings, and some even braver members have gone on to call for Najib’s resignation.
It must be galling to Najib to be unable to remove Muhyiddin from his position as Number 2 in the party, while Muhyiddin spreads his message far and wide through his speeches at the divisional meetings. Najib may have had the authority to remove him from his Cabinet position, but Umno has its own set of laws, and Najib has now found a way to oust him using those laws.
However, Najib must consider carefully the consequences of what he is about to do. For one, Muhyiddin is seen as a hero, and ousting him from the party he loves will make him a martyr to all the divisions already sympathetic to him, and may convince other divisions to rebel if they do not approve of the manner of removal. There has been a pattern of rebellion throughout Umno of late, with the disapproval and disdain of the grassroots becoming more and more evident with each divisional meeting.
