A group of Umno grassroots leaders claiming to represent 20 of the party’s branches in Sepang have called on Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to resign.

The group’s spokesperson, Rushdan Mohamed, said Najib should resign as both prime minister and as Umno president because the prolonged scandals afflicting him have made him a liability.

“Umno does not belong to Najib. We hope these disconcerting issues can be resolved immediately, before Umno and BN are rejected in the 14th general election.

“Being among the grassroots and among the voters, I can’t see how Umno and BN can be re-elected today.

“So I really hope, and beg Datuk Seri Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak, to resign as prime minister and as Umno president, if you love this grand party. It is time because so much time has already been given to you to resolve all these problems,” Rushdan ( photo ) said at a press conference in Kajang last night.

Rushdan, who is chairperson of the Rista Villa Perdana Putra Umno branch, also expressed dissatisfaction with the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the 1MDB scandal and the RM2.6 billion "political donation" that Najib supposedly received.

“How can there be a RM2.6 billion donation, when even the deputy party president (Muhyiddin Yassin) does not know about it?

“If it wasn’t been exposed (by The Wall Street Journal), perhaps no one would even know what Najib used it for. We as Umno members feel that if we had that much funds - RM2.6 billion - we shouldn’t have lost Selangor,” he said.

Party hierarchy

As for who should replace Najib, Rushdan said the matter should follow party hierarchy, which would imply that Muhyiddin would take over.

He said previously, when former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad felt that the support for him was wavering and decided to step down, there was no clear successor but Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, being the deputy, was chosen anyway.

As it turned out, BN scored a major victory in the subsequent general election, although Abdullah’s administration was worse than Mahathir’s, Rushdan said.

“What people want is change. When the people feel that a leader is no longer relevant, then he should be replaced,” he said.

If Najib is confident with his claim that he has the backing of Umno’s three million members, then he should call for a party election.

‘Branches want party elections next year’

Rushdan estimates that only about 60 percent of the Umno members currently support Najib.

In addition, he said many Umno branches nationwide have, at their branch annual general meetings, called for party elections to be held as scheduled next year, including about two-thirds of the branches in the Umno Sepang division.

The party elections had been postponed by 18 months to mid-2018.

To a question, Rushdan said there are more than 100 Umno branches under the Sepang division and that, hopefully, more branches would come out to support his call for Najib’s resignation.

He added that he has yet to solicit support for his call from Umno branches outside Sepang.

His team at the press confrence also said they were prepared to face disciplinary action from the party for openly calling for Najib’s resignation, while Rushdan claimed he had already been attacked with slander after posting messages critical of Najib on his Facebook account some time ago.

Asked why the group did not wait until the government explains the 1MDB and donation issue in Parliament on Dec 3, Rushdan replied that the issues have been dragging on long enough.

“Take the RM2.6 billion issue, for example. Even early on, Najib’s credibility had been questioned. No matter how it is explained, an early statement from a minister defending Najib had said, ‘It’d be stupid of Najib if he wanted to do something and the money went into his personal bank accounts.’

“We, the underlings, as branch chiefs had to defend Najib and (tell the people), ‘It’d be stupid of Najib if he wants to take money and it went into his personal bank accounts.’

“But what happened? In the end, it was admitted that it was true the money went into his personal bank accounts. Do we still want a leader like this?” Rushdan said, adding that the money should have gone into an Umno trust fund.

Najib has consistently denied wrongdoing in the matter.