ANWAR Ibrahim has said Mohamed Azmin Ali’s views on an audio recording purportedly of a conversation between the PKR president and Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is the Gombak lawmaker’s personal view.

 “That’s his (Azmin’s) view. He is an expert when it comes to audio and video (recordings),” the Opposition leader said at a press conference today.

The Port Dickson MP refused to be drawn into the matter further.

Yesterday, Azmin had described the supposed conversation between both leaders as “treachery” on the part of the opposition leader.

“I believe this is the biggest treachery committed by Anwar towards his party and also Pakatan Harapan (PH) component parties, because he had held these negotiations privately,” the Perikatan Nasional (PN) information chief said today, asserting his confidence in the fact that the audio clip featuring his former leader is authentic.

Azmin’s comment came barely a year after his instrumental part in the Sheraton Move, in which he led a group of PKR lawmakers to join Muhyiddin Yassin’s Bersatu in dropping out of PH, which resulted in the collapse of the PH government.

Azmin later joined Bersatu and became a minister in Muhyiddin’s PN cabinet.

“As a (former) officer who had served under Anwar for a long time and was his private secretary, I am confident that the audio is authentic, which can be proven through investigations,” he told reporters yesterday.

He urged authorities to immediately investigate the matter because doing so will also ensure the individuals involved have to defend themselves.

Azmin said Anwar and Zahid should at least come clean to their own parties.

Zahid has dismissed the audio clip as fake, adding that it was a disgusting political gambit released by people wanting to “undermine and destroy Umno”.

In the conversation, voices – supposed to be those of Zahid and Anwar – were discussing the outcome of the recent Umno General Assembly, at which the party severed ties with Bersatu and PN.

Anwar had also refuted any part in the clip, but caused more controversy by defending the content.

“What is wrong with the conversation, if it is true. Is there any criminal element or is it wrong?” Anwar said on Saturday in an online forum organised by Majlis Professor Negara.

“There is nothing wrong with the audio,” he told Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Prof Dr Mohamad Agus Yusof, who was interviewing him. – April 12, 2021.