'Will Umno president be PM three years on?'

 

UMNO AGM Umno deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin is unsure if Umno members can still address party president Najib Abdul Razak as "prime minister" in the party's convention three years from now.

Based on a simulation of BN’s position in the next general election, he said the coalition may only win 103 seats, which is a two percent drop from the 133 seats it won in the last polls.

"I don't know if in the next three years, whether we can address our president as prime minister or not," he said in his winding-up speech at the Umno general assembly today.

"If we want to address this, our initiatives must be wholehearted. Let's increase our seats to 141. Can we do this?" Muhyiddin (right) asked the delegates.

Receiving a less than enthusiastic "yes", he said: "That's not loud enough. That means you are not confident".

At this, the delegates then responded with a resounding "yes".

"With hard work, we can increase our seats to 159," said Muhyiddin.

"The next election is at least 39 months from now. The question is, with such a short amount of time, what are the new initiatives we can implement to return people's confidence?" he asked.

Registration numbers worrying

Earlier, Umno vice-president Shafie Apdal (left) told delegates that the low voter registration from BN component parties is worrying.

Citing the Election Commission's statistics from its database, he said only 256 MCA members, 266 MIC members, and 373 Gerakan members registered as voters from June 2013 to Sept 2014.

"This is very worrying. As such, the party president (Najib Abdul Razak) has asked me to meet all BN component parties so that a national movement can be done," he said.

As for DAP, he said 9,309 had registered as voters while Umno saw 5,939 members registering.

Shafie then stressed that the party's survival was not based on laungan (shouts) only. We need to regain the seats we lost in the next general election," he added.