The Malaysian Insight

UMNO has recovered from defections and shock of party leaders being hauled up to courts after the last general election and is now on a stable footing, said Abdul Rahman Dahlan.

The Supreme Council member and Tuaran Umno chief said the party is doing much better now than rival Bersatu, the party led by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad to the GE14 victory on May 9 last year.

“We became very unstable. Former prime minister Najib Razak was taken down. He is now in and out of court.

“Then we elected former deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as president. But he, too, ran into problems.

“Indeed, for the first six months after the elections, Umno was in a mess, unstable. Now it’s April 2019, look how fast we have turned around.

“Umno is the most the stable party in the country at the moment. Overall, Sabah Umno, too, is back on its feet,” he said during a meet-the-people session in Tuaran on Sunday.

Sabah Umno, at present, has only one assemblyman – Sg Sibuga’s Musa Aman, but Rahman said that did not matter as Sabah Umno was now closer to the people on the ground.

“The funny thing is that the more we lose our elected reps, the stronger we become and the more by-elections we won,” he said referring to the three straight by-election wins in Cameron Highlands, Semenyih and Rantau.

“We know that the power of political party doesn’t lie with the wakil rakyat any more, it lies with the ordinary people.”

The former minister also said Bersatu was, in the meantime, losing its momentum after GE14.

He added that there was little hype in the launch of Bersatu in Sabah on April 6 and the excitement seemed to have lost almost immediately.

Bersatu has also failed to gain any traction in Sarawak, he said.

“When Umno entered Sabah 25 years ago, there were many ministers, officers around to help strengthen Umno. But I don’t see this in Bersatu.  

“Malaysians right now may subscribe to Dr Mahathir’s Malay-centric policies but in reality, the ruling party is in a mess,” he said, adding that this was why Bersatu will not be a threat to Umno in Sabah. – April 17, 2019.