The Malaysian Insight

IT was easy for Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali to walk away from Umno.

He has been an outsider even in the Bagan Serai Umno division to which he belonged. He has been the area MP since 2013 but has held no position in the Umno division there and has not been invited to local party events.

In short, Dr Noor Azmi has faced a boycott from his own division members for the past five years.

When they heard that he was going to be fielded again in GE14, Bagan Serai Umno members pleaded and urged Najib Razak and the party leadership against doing so.

But their pleas fell on deaf ears.

Sources also told The Malaysian Insight that Dr Noor Azmi was fielded twice in general elections because he and his younger brother, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia vice-chancellor Dr Noor Azlan Ghazali were close to former prime minister Najib Razak.

“Even though the division rejected him as a candidate, he managed to get the candidacy because he had good ties with the top party leadership.

“But the division rejected him,” said the Perak Umno source who declined to be named.

 The Malaysian Insight has tried to contact Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali over these claims but he has yet to respond.

The medical doctor won Bagan Serai in 2013 with a majority of 1,140 votes, beating PKR’s Dr Mohd Noor Manuty and an independent candidate. He retained the seat in the 14thgeneral election last month by a mere 172 votes.

The source said since he first contested and won Bagan Serai in 2013, he had no party positions in the division and was largely ignored by the other party members.

The MP was also never invited to division meetings.

“Things were deliberately made hard for him because he was not the division’s choice,” the source said.

The source said Dr Noor Azmi abandoned ship and applied to join Bersatu because he did not want to lose his Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM) chairmanship.

He was made chairman on October 12, 2016. The LLM website stated that his term is until October 11 this year.

Dr Noor Azmi declared yesterday that he supported the leadership of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the Pakatan Harapan government at both state and national levels.

“I made this decision after taking into account the people’s interest, as well as the interest of religion, race and country,” he said.

 Rumours that he would jump ship started a day or two after the polls, and he had denied them.

He is the first Umno MP to leave the party since BN’s crushing defeat in the May 9 general election.

Bagan Serai Umno division chief Sham Mat Sahat confirmed what the sources had said about Dr Noor Azam.

He said the party leadership knew that the MP did not get along with the division’s leadership.

“I had informed the party leadership about him but they did not care.

“We rejected his election candidacy but the leadership chose him anyway, so we had no choice but to help him win,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

Meanwhile, Umno veteran Zaharin Mat Yassin blamed Dr Noor Azmi’s exit on acting party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

He said Zahid should bear the responsibility because he was the one who smoothed things over between Dr Noor Azmi and the Bagan Serai division.

“The division didn’t want the man. But Zahid pacified them. Now that the MP has jumped ship, Zahid has to be responsible,” he wrote on his Facebook page yesterday.– June 26, 2018.