UMNO president and Barisan National (BN) chairman Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said he was not solely responsible for the coalition’s losses in last year’s general election.

He laid equal blame on former prime minister and BN poster boy Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

“After GE15 no one wanted to be held responsible, I was pressured to resign but why me alone? 

“What about our poster boy (Ismail), the state liaison chiefs, some of the division and wing heads? It was everyone’s responsibility.

“So stop the blame game. Do some soul searching and conduct post-mortems on why we performed badly,” he was quoted as saying in an interview with The Star today. 

The deputy prime minister also admitted that Umno and BN failed to win the support of young voters in the national polls.

He further blamed acts of sabotage from within the party for their failure.

“In GE15, we partly lost in getting youth votes. We fielded almost 80% new and young candidates but failed due to some factors, such as internal sabotaging,” he said.

In the general election, BN won only 30 seats, of which 26 came from Umno.

The party suffered a clean loss in the northern Malay states.

Many quarters blamed Zahid for the defeat, suggesting that he had forced Ismail to call for an early election.

In the run-up to the election, Zahid dropped several Umno veterans from its candidate list, a move which backfired especially in Perlis where former party strongman Shahidan Kassim won the Arau parliamentary seat on a PAS ticket. 

The Islamist party also took full control of the state.

Instability in Umno also saw PAS and Bersatu under the Perikatan Nasional (PN) banner winning over the Malay votes.

After the general election, Zahid expressed his wish to join Pakatan Harapan in forming a unity government when a small number of BN leaders had indicated their readiness to join a PN-led government.

In the same interview, Zahid also hinted that BN’s lack of funds also led to the poor outcome in the polls.

“In any election funding is much needed. BN, especially Umno, has very little funding. Our opponents took advantage of this weakness. They used whatever resources to fish for and reward young voters.

“Voters took the last-minute rewards (allegedly given by the other parties) as a factor to determine which candidate they would vote for,” he said.

In Umno’s annual general assembly yesterday, delegates voted to stop any challenges for the party’s top two posts in the upcoming election, giving Zahid and even tighter grip on the party. – January 15, 2023.