43. Solve UMNO's Woes
Sabah Member of Parliament Datuk Anifah Aman said the Umno leadership must “do something” about the party’s internal problems rather than worrying about whether any of its MPs are going to cross over to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat.
“What is happening now is that Umno leaders seem to be more preoccupied with the speculated defections of some of the MPs instead of addressing the problems within Umno itself”, he told Bernama from Kota Kinabalu today.
Anifah, who is chairman of the Sabah Barisan Nasional (BN) MPs’ Backbenchers Club, said there was no question of Umno MPs defecting if the party remained strong and its top leadership was not sidetracked by other issues.
Alluding to Sept 16, which opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim claimed would be the day his Pakatan Rakyat coalition would take over the federal government with the help of defections by BN MPs, Anifah said: “ It’s not going to happen if the top Umno leadership really addresses the party’s internal problems”.
Anifah said Umno vice-president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s remarks on Wednesday that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi’s transition plan to step down by 2010 was too long, was another problem within Umno that should be addressed before things got worse in the party, the lynchpin of the ruling BN.
