HISHAMMUDDIN Hussein will be made deputy prime minister as early as this week as Muhyiddin Yassin tries to shore up his Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration and stem defections from Umno, sources said today. 

The Malaysian Insight understands the move could anger instead of appease Umno after the party’s Supreme Council’s decision to review any electoral pact with Bersatu and Kelantan Umno chief and Machang MP Ahmad Jazlan Yaakub’s decision to withdraw his support for PN over the weekend.

Jazlan’s decision means that PN only has 110 MPs in the 222-seat Dewan Rakyat, with the opposition bench also at 110 MPs. Two seats are vacant due to deaths.

“Hisham will be deputy prime minister ASAP,” a source told The Malaysian Insight.

Other sources said the proposal was made but had not been told to allies in the PN pact.

The foreign affairs minister’s ascension to within a heartbeat of Malaysia’s top job is also causing ripples in PN as he is vaulting over other leaders, such as PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang, the PN deputy chief, and Bersatu’s Azmin Ali, the de facto senior administration leader when their government was sworn in last March. 

Both Muhyiddin and Azmin’s defection from the previous Pakatan Harapan (PH) government led to its collapse when prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad resigned.

Speculation the foreign affairs minister will get the post reached feverish pitch over the weekend when pictures of him in the sultan of Johor’s private jet was published.

But such courtesy has been extended to other politicians, including PKR president Anwar Ibrahim, after his release from jail in 2018.

A political blogger with close ties to Umno speculated the move came as Muhyiddin has to receive treatment for pancreatic cancer although the prime minister’s doctors cleared him of the illness last year.

The prime minister has been active in the past week, chairing both cabinet and party meetings, visiting flood victims in Johor and is to make an announcement about further lockdown restrictions later today.

Hishammuddin, like Muhyiddin, hails from Johor and comes from a prominent Umno family. His grandfather Onn Jaafar was Umno’s first president and his father, Hussein Onn, was Umno president and the third prime minister.

His cousin, Najib Razak, was Umno president and sixth prime minister until he lost the government in 2018.

The politician is also married to a cousin of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah.

He has been a politician for 30 years since his father died in 1990 but no longer holds any senior post in Umno’s central leadership after skipping party elections in the aftermath of the 2018 defeat. 

He scraped through to be Umno’s third vice-president in the 2013 elections after narrowly defeating Mukhriz Mahathir.

Hishammuddin has publicly questioned Umno’s move to review ties with PN last week and is seen as part of the faction that wants to keep being part of the Muhyiddin government and is opposed to demands for a snap general election. – January 11, 2021.