Ahmad Zahid's actions can cause distrust among UMNO members - Analyst

KUALA LUMPUR: The confidence of UMNO members towards Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi will fade if he truly wrote a letter to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong supporting Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as the new prime minister.

Research fellow from the Institute of Political Studies Malaysia Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM MAPAN), Dr Achmad Dzariean Mohd Nadzri stressed that it will at once have a big impact and a bad signal to the party itself.

"There will be impact on Ahmad Zahid and the party, as well as UMNO's own policy. When he becomes a component of supporting the government, we see UMNO's previous statements that did not want to cooperate with Anwar and rejected cooperation with DAP.

"The big impact is if (Ahmad Zahid) gives support to Anwar, this will cause reliability problems from members when the president makes a bad signal.

“From the top level of UMNO and the confidence of subordinates (members) to the party leadership," he said when contacted here, on Saturday.

On Friday, a portal claimed that Ahmad Zahid and former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had written a letter to Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri'ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah to support the Pakatan Harapan chairman to form a new government.

The portal claimed that a letter dated October 11 stated that both Najib and Ahmad Zahid together with a number of UMNO MPs agreed to support Anwar.

Meanwhile, Dr Achmad Dzariean stressed that the Perikatan Nasional (PN) needed to do something if this was true.

"Every day we see many MPs expressing a motion of no confidence in the current government.

"If this allegation is not true, then the PN should also take serious action by looking back or calling back the party president who is in PN and UMNO outside to negotiate and resolve this matter well," he said.

Earlier, 16 MPs from Pejuang and Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) filed a motion of no-confidence against Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.