Friday, June 29, 2018

Freezing Umno's bank accounts and deregistration: What it really means

On June 21, Zahid Hamidi revealed how during a closed-door meeting on June 7 Mahathir Mohamad had asked him to dissolve Umno and get all the party's MPs to cross over join his Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia. The disclosure came after Mahathir's claim that the acting Umno chief had met him to seek his advice on how to run Umno after the May 9 polls defeat. Zahid had meant his explanation to be kept closed door but when the video was leaked, he made not attempt to deny it. Especially after Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah had chided him for "crawling" to the PM. Khairuddin Hassan, the man who arranged the four-eyed meeting, was furious: "Zahid is a liar. Every word he said (of the meeting with Mahathir) was a lie," Khairuddin fired back at Zahid.

But with Mahathir's move to (ask the MACC or the 1MDB Task Force to) freeze the bank accounts of Umno HQ and Selangor ahead of tomorrow's Umno elections, where Zahid and Razaleigh are clashing for president, the story Zahid had told the Umno members in Selangor in the video has suddenly become a whole lot more credible now.