THERE are enough seats for Umno, PAS and Bersatu to share in the next general election, said Umno Supreme Council member Annuar Musa.

In an interview with Umno’s information chief, Shahril Hamdan, Annuar said the three parties should look for a formula to overcome differences. 

“There are 157 seats belonging to the Malays and Bumiputera and that is enough for the three of us.

“We can divide it fairly and we can win all the Malay seats but it can only happen if we can find a common ground. It is our job to do that,” said the federal territories minister and Ketereh MP.

Umno and PAS had previously formed Muafakat Nasional, a Malay-Muslim charter for political cooperation after Barisan Nasional (BN) was unseated from federal power by Pakatan Harapan (PH) in the 2018 general election.

Bersatu was recently accepted to join MN after it ditched PH late February this year.

During the interview, Annuar also said Umno can no longer stand alone as a party and it needs to cooperate with others to survive.

He added that Umno must accept the reality that it cannot win an election if it decides to go solo.

“Now, in a family whose father is an Umno man, do you think that the son will also be an Umno man? Those who vote, by the age of 18 now, do you think they will vote for Umno. I don’t think so.

“Times have changed. The people want quality leadership, integrity. There is no use of being nostalgic saying Umno was once upon a time a great party.

“We cannot go alone and we need to be open. We have to cooperate and to find a formula on how to win in the next general election. We must coexist,” said Annuar during the interview live-streamed on Facebook.

He said Umno must regain its position in order to protect the Malay-Muslim community and to make sure that DAP will not return to power.

BN lost for the first time in 2018 to PH when the then opposition coalition was led by Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

In the general election that year, Umno, a Malay nationalist party, won 54 seats while Islamist party PAS won 18.

Umno’s splinter, Bersatu, won 13 seats while Amanah, formed by former PAS leaders, managed to get 11 seats.

Dr Mahathir, who was Umno’s president before he quit the party in 2003, accepted DAP as an ally and formed a government with leaders from the party.

However, the PH government collapsed after Bersatu, led by Muhyiddin Yassin, quit the government and allied with Umno, PAS and BN.

Annuar was picked by Muhyiddin to replace Amanah’s Khalid Samad as the federal territories minister. – November 19, 2020.