KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 10 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad called on Umno members today to rise and reject their chief and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak or risk seeing their party and the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) crumble at the next national elections three years away.
The retired prime minister who has been on a campaign to oust Najib from power predicted the chances for the Malay ruling party to recover voter confidence was high if they could effect a leadership change now instead of after the 14th general elections (GE14).
“In GE14, they all, Malay, Chinese, Indians will reject BN because of Najib’s leadership. Umno will be destroyed because many Umno members cannot accept Najib and his deeds. Many of them will vote the opposition or abstain,” he wrote in his latest blog entry.
He added that the people’s “hatred” is not focused on either Umno or BN, but solely on its chief and several “sweet-talking Umno leaders seeking positions or other things”, but did not name any of them.
“Umno members who love and want Umno to remain powerful must reject Najib before the elections. If this rejection is made too late, the time to restore Umno will be insufficient.
“If [you] love Umno reject Najib now. If love Najib, Umno will lose power and disintegrate,” Dr Mahathir wrote.
The 90-year-old Umno politician has been open about his disdain for Najib whom he blames as the root of the country’s political instability and economic woes.
He also pinned the depreciation of the ringgit against the greenback and the domino effect on rising living costs on the Najib administration, even claiming that many Malaysians were now bankrupt due to the introduction of the Goods and Service Tax in April.
His blog post today was a reiteration of his previous vitriol for his one-time protégé, most recently voiced during the two-day Bersih 4 rally in the city centre on August 29 and 30.
Dr Mahathir had attended the rally in downtown Kuala Lumpur on both days, declaring on the second day that he was not interested in the institutional reforms demanded by the organiser, polls reform group Bersih 2.0, and was there only to demand Najib’s resignation.
