THE top leaders of Umno and PAS have met to affirm their lasting cooperation, Umno Youth chief Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki said, at a time when Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s government faces possible collapse.

Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and the Islamist party’s leader, Abdul Hadi Awang, met for almost two hours to discuss strengthening their pact under Muafakat Nasional.

“The two top leaders shared their views and their eagerness to continuing to ensure that the Umno-PAS pact is preserved and strengthened.

“No matter the slander that is hurled to make the pact fail, what is certain is that Umno-PAS will continue their pact,” Asyraf said in a Facebook post, along with a photo of himself, Zahid, Hadi and Umno secretary-general Ahmad Maslan in a meeting. 

According to Ahmad’s tweets of the meeting, it was held last night.

This meeting comes ahead of Muafakat’s meeting with Muhyiddin on Monday to trash out differences, at a time when he is said to have lost the support of the majority of MPs.

After Muhyiddin’s takeover of Putrajaya in late February, his Perikatan Nasional (PN) government had 113 MPs backing it out of Parliament’s 222 seats, but Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim has now claimed that he has the majority support.

Umno and PAS, which have their own Muafakat pact, are also in the PN government. However, Umno has refused to join the PN coalition, while PAS has.

Umno is also at loggerheads with Muhyiddin and his party Bersatu, over the fact that the latter has more seats in Parliament but has lost out to Bersatu in terms of ministers’ portfolios, seat allocations in the recent Sabah election and choice of the state’s chief minister.

Umno is also said to be throwing its weight behind Anwar’s claims of majority support to oust Muhyiddin.

Anwar met Yang di-Pertuan Agong Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah on Tuesday to present evidence of his numbers and the King is now in the process of verifying the numbers with various political parties. – October 17, 2020.