One of the unexpected victims of the Negeri Sembilan crisis might likely be Zahid Hamidi, the Umno president.
Zahid has been ruling Umno unchallenged, not because he is popular, but because a popular challenge against his rule cannot be organized.
Zahid is such an experienced and battle hardened politician, that he seems to be able to sense any attempt to organize a move to overthrow him, and nip it in the bud.
So far, Zahid has been extremely successful. He is so successful, that Umno members are likely not rebelling against his leadership today, not because they support him, but because they are unwilling to pay the price of going against him.
If even popular Umno leaders like Khairy and Hishammuddin were expelled or suspended from the party, for appearing to desire to rebel against Zahid, what can you really expect from a Umno division or branch leaders?
The Negeri Sembilan crisis however, is showing signs that Zahid has become weak and vulnerable, because he is both unable to compel the 14 Negeri Sembilan Aduns to do as he says or punish them for not doing what he says.
A few days ago, Zahid announced that after meeting the 14 Aduns, the 14 Aduns had agreed to continue to support the PH led state government, just like how he wanted them to.
Just a day or two after Zahid made the announcement however, the unofficial leader of the 14 Aduns, Jalaluddin Alias, stated that the 14 Aduns will not support the PH led state of government. They will not try to overthrow the PH led government , as they had earlier planned, but they will continue to object to the PH led government by leaving the state government and becoming the opposition instead.
That the 14 Aduns are still not supporting the PH led state government , although Zahid has expressly stated that he wants them to, without Zahid being able to punish them, is making Zahid look weak.
To control the damage, today, an unnamed Umno source has informed Malaysia Kini that 12 of the 14 Aduns are in fact, in alignment with Zahid , and desire to continue to serve in the state government.
However, the Malaysia Kini report is also saying that unlike what Zahid has claimed earlier, he had only spoken to 12 of the 14 Aduns.
Jalaluddin, the unofficial leader of the 14 Aduns and also Mohamad Hassan, the Umno number 2 and someone that Dap Youth has accused of being the enemy within in the crisis, were absent from the meeting.
My take on this is that Zahid is realizing that the perception that he cannot control or punish the Negeri Sembilan Aduns is sending a dangerous message that he is weak and vulnerable.
To prevent the perception from spreading, he is sending a counter signal to indicate that actually, just 2 of the 14 Aduns are rebelling against him - the remaining 12 are still toeing to his wishes.
Did he succeed in creating this perception ?
Well, for now at least, I will say that between the signals that Zahid and Jalaluddin are sending, it is Jalaluddin's signal that has the upper hand.
Why ?
Because when Jalaluddin sent his signal, he did it openly in a press conference with the Aduns he represented standing beside him.
The signal that Zahid is sending however is weak, because it is being transmitted by an "source",who doesn't even dare to be named, not any of the 12 Aduns itself.
The message that the "source" is transmitting is also to an extent negating Zahid's earlier statement - earlier , Zahid had said that he met all of the 14 Aduns, but now we know that he only met 12, and the two he did not meet are the two most important Aduns of them all, namely Mohamed Hassan, Zahid's number two , and Jalaluddin, the leader of the 14 Aduns.
Also, more importantly, none of the said 12 Aduns have come out to confirm that what Zahid said or the unnamed source said is true.
Also, none of the 12 Aduns have publicly declared that they support the PH led state government , like Zahid said.
So in conclusion, rather than indicate that he is still in control of Umno, I would say that Zahid's weak and feeble signal is only indicating that even Zahid has realised his vulnerable and precarious position.
Despite that, he is still unable to protect himself effectively, because the counter signal that he is able to conjure up, is only exposing his vulnerability, not affirming his invincibility.
Zahid clearly needs to do better.
If he doesn't - if he doesn't send an effective signal that will remove all doubt that he is still in full control of Umno and those who defy him will face serious consequences - a movement to topple him will arise from within Umno.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact creator@newswav.com.
