FORMER Selangor menteri besar Muhammad Muhammad Taib’s slamming of the opposition as “hypocrites” has earned him fiery criticisms by social media users unimpressed with his defection.

After Prime Minister Najib Razak announced Muhammad’s, or better known as Mat Taib, return to his old party, the former Rural and Regional Development Minister called the opposition “hypocrites” for disparaging him.

“When I was with them, I was a hero. Now everything is different. Hypocrites. Hypocrites,” he wrote on Facebook.

The 72-year-old did it at his own peril. He soon got slammed by other Facebook users, who were unimpressed by his U-turn back to Umno.

Zakariya Abdul commented “frog”, while Hasnul Hadi asked, “Did you get a project?”

“Enough Tan Sri… your time has long passed,” one Mohd Mokhtar wrote.

Mik Jowo Perak commented that it was such a waste for a veteran in politics to “jump here and there” just to return to where he came from in the end.

“What you have done is serve your own designs, Tan Sri. Is that not hypocrisy?” the Facebook user wrote.

On Sunday, political observers, the media and politicians on both sides of the divide waited in anticipation of the nature of Najib’s scheduled announcement. However, the affair turned out to be anti-climatic when it was merely to announce Muhammad’s return to Umno.

He said he had left PKR because the party never discussed the Malay agenda.

His return to Umno is being read as a political move to strengthen Umno in Selangor as part of efforts by  the Barisan Nasional lynchpin party to win back the state from the opposition.

Sources told The Malaysian Insight that eight PKR assemblymen in the Selangor government were supposed to jump ship with Muhammad to deliver the state to BN.

For the plan – in true Perak Crisis 2009 style – to work, eight PKR reps, all 13 PAS reps and one independent rep, Khalid Ibrahim of Port Klang would have to cross over and become BN-friendly. BN has 12 reps in the 56-seat Selangor legislative assembly.

However, PAS and PKR reps have denied there is such a plot.

Before Muhammad joined PKR in late 2015, he was a PAS member. He quit Umno for PAS just two days before the 13th general election.

When PAS suffered an internal split in 2015, he moved to PKR. – September 20, 2017