Current Umno president Zahid Hamidi’s controversial claim recently that ex-prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had attempted to “disband” Umno during his second stint in Putrajaya, and that he had to personally intervene in order to save the party seemed to have opened a fresh can of worms; not surprisingly, it has also drawn an angry response from the straight talking former Umno president!
Responding to Zahid, Dr Mahathir recalled how the grand old nationalist party had suffered its worst election defeat in history back in 2018 and was embarrassingly ousted from power for the first time.
The two-time prime minister also poured scorn on Zahid’s ostentatious claim that it was the latter who had “saved” Umno from being “deregistered” during his rule under Pakatan Harapan following the landmark 14th general election.
Taking to his popular Facebook page, Dr Mahathir then pointed out that Umno did suffer a heavy loss in the elections, but that did not mean that the party was destroyed.
He went on to stress that even before his re-election as the country’s leader for the second time, Umno had seemingly strayed from its original goal which was to fight for the “race, religion and country”; however, according to him, its name was used instead to enrich certain people under a new motto “Cash is king!”
Dr Mahathir also vehemently denied that it was Zahid who had brought about his downfall in early 2020; instead, ironically, he appeared to concede that it was his own party Bersatu that had precipitated his resignation, as its leaders back then decided not to heed his advice.
But while his denials were to be expected, is there more to it than what the former statesman, whom some have referred to as a “dictator”, had revealed?
Incidentally, one of the questions that has been left “hanging” until this day without any credible closure is: why didn’t Dr Mahathir immediately pass the baton to his successor Anwar Ibrahim as promised, if he felt that his own party Bersatu had lost confidence in him?
Instead, he had claimed that in such circumstances, the honourable thing to do was to resign, which he did, but shouldn't he have allowed the more than 200 members of parliament to decide whether he had their support before “resigning” abruptly? By failing to do so, didn't he actually abandon his own PH coalition, which was democratically elected by the people? Against that backdrop, was his act really “honourable”, or was it the opposite?
In fact, critics are also entitled to ask if he had “resigned” in order to force the PH government to collapse on its own so that he could then be re-elected as prime minister for a third time under a “new government?” But instead, as it turned out, Muhyiddin Yassin and his sly Sheraton Move conspirators had other ideas and beat him to it?
Additionally, Dr Mahathir had said that Zahid wasn't really a “hero” like what the latter had claimed to be, but was actually an accused in the court of law who was willing to work with his party’s sworn enemy the DAP in order to save his own life - and not to save Umno!
But having said that, didn't the ex-prime minister also work with DAP before? Moreover, wasn’t he the one too who had appointed Lim Guan Eng to be the finance minister under his tenure?
Interestingly, while the ex-premier may vilify Zahid and Umno for straying from their original struggle, didn’t the deregistration of the iconic party actually happen under his own watch in the late eighties after which it became known as Umno Baru?
In closing, if anything, doesn’t the current spat between the former and current head honchos of what used to be the country’s most formidable political party only serve to underscore all the shameless double-talk and hypocrisy that has become so entrenched in politics? Which inevitably begs another question: are there really any “heroes” left in politics… or are they all just the same, plain, self-serving "villains?"
Information source: The Star and Dr Mahathir Mohamad
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