The 14th General Election is around the corner.
Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi, let slip this possibility when he spoke at the Merbok UMNO AGM in Sungai Petani last night and continued the Zahid-Mahathir spat started by the Deputy Prime Minister striking the first blow by taking a dig at the 92-year-old’s Indian heritage.
Zahid told.Umno Merbok to hold on to the Merbok parliamentary and Tanjung Dawai state seats and reclaim the Bukit Selambau state seat if they wished to enjoy rewards.
He said: “I have heard requests for allocations for a hostel, canteen and water pipe upgrade here. I promise to return in six months with gifts if you can retain Merbok and Tanjung Dawai and take back Bukit Selambau.
“In GE11, we made a clean sweep of all three but in GE12, we lost all three seats and the state of Kedah along with that. Don’t let it happen again.”
This would mean that the 14th General Election would be all over in six months’ time, pointing to general polls this year rather than next year.
But will Zahid remain as Deputy Prime Minister after the 14th General Election as UMNO faces the possibility of historic triple lossES in the next general election, resulting in UMNO being ejected out of Putrajaya and occupying the Opposition benches in Parliament?
There is no doubt that the UMNO President, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and all the UMNO leaders are suffering from an attack of nerves, because for the first time in UMNO history, UMNO face the prospects of historic triple losses, all happening at the same time in the next general election, viz:
• UMNO’s loss of support of the majority of Malay voters in the country.
• UMNO’s loss of support of the majority of the 1.6 million civil servants in the country.
• UMNO’s loss of the support of the highest percentage of UMNO members (at present, 3.5 million UMNO members) at any general election in the nation’s history.
Najib and UMNO leaders are fearful that the seismic political development three weeks ago on July 14 when Pakatan Harapan announced its structure, logo and leadership line-up, portended major political changes in the country – sustaining not only a political tsunami in the urban areas but also creating a political tsunami among the Malay voters in the rural areas for political change in Malaysia.
UMNO leaders suddenly realized that the unthinkable Mahathir-Anwar reconciliation after nearly two decades of political enmity between the two political leaders pose a grave threat to UMNO’s survival and its chance of continuing to govern the country, as the Mahathir-Anwar reconciliation and combination leading the four-party Pakatan Harapan coalition of DAP, PKR, Amanah and Bersatu are creating the political conditions whereby UMNO will suffer the historic triple losses all happening at the same time in the 14th General Election resulting in UMNO becoming an Opposition party in Parliament for the first time in UMNO and Malaysian history.