COMMENT Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak may have shrugged off the threat of a parliamentary no-confidence vote against him but, apparently, other perils lie in wait for him.

At first the initial portents of trouble on the party - as different to parliamentary - front did not look menacing when last month the chiefs of 13 Umno branches in the Telok Kemang division in Negri Sembilan urged the president’s resignation.

Thirteen is a rather untoward number in Umno’s history. It was the participation of 13 illegal branches in the party’s elective exercise in 1987 that led to its deregistration and the formation of Umno Baru.

But the Telok Kemang 13, despite echos of the 1987 antecedent, did not bode ill for Najib.

The signs of discontent emanating from the division were promptly shunted into insignificance by the division chief’s disclosure that the 13 did not raise their displeasure when the question of support for the party president was raised when the division met earlier.

Division chief Mohamed Isa Samad ( photo ) had little difficulty in asserting that the 13 malcontents were stragglers in the division’s overall endorsement of the party president.

The way Isa, who is the chairperson of Felda and a strong Najib ally, dealt with the stirrings of anti-Najib discontent appeared to set a trend in how party higher-ups were going to snuff it out.

If branch chiefs assemble to publicly remonstrate againt Najib in advance of the annual Umno general assembly from Dec 8-12, the division chief would respond by adducing evidence that the dissidence is a pipsqueak in an overwhelming chorus of ayesayers.

Wasn’t it party vice-president Zahid Hamidi at the next instance of branch-level dissidence against Najib - this time by representatives of 20 branches in Sepang division in Selangor - who reminded all and sundry that Umno had 21,000 branches nationwide.

So what’s the fuss about double-digit protestations against the enormity of a representative mass that runs to five figures.

Umno vice-president Hishammuddin Hussein, emulating Zahid, sought to shed more perspective on the solidity of the backing for Najib when weighed against the sporadic nature of the opposition by highlighting the endorsement the party supremo had received from 132 of Umno’s 191 divisions that had met and decided to support Najib.

Hishammuddin emphasised that “not one division” had indicated that Najib should go. Interpretation: 132 divisions had endorsed Najib while the quiet of the remaining 59 could be taken as tacit backing for the party president.

Piddling by comparison

Though these public deductions by Hishammuddin were promptly counterpointed by the announcement by 34 branch chiefs from five states that they wanted Najib to quit, still when seen against the totality of 21,000 branches and 132 (out of 191) divisional endorsements for the incumbent president, the quantity of dissenters look piddling by comparison.

Of course, this picture will hold only if what looks like scattered stirrings of dissent do not accrue in a wave.

With yesterday’s announcement by 81 branch chiefs from eight divisions in Johor that they want Najib to resign on account of what they see as the damage he has inflicted on the party, the signs are undeniable that incipient dissent is on the verge of full blown insurgency.

At this stage it would disingenuous of Najib’s leading defender, Zahid, to cast aspersions about a “mastermind” being behind a swelling chorus of naysayers to the president.

A more constructive tack would be to see what may be the cause of the blaze instead of summoning the firefighters.

This would entail candid acknowledgment that the matter of the RM2.6 billion donation that found its way into the party president’s personal bank accounts must be resolved with an explanation that cuts through the fog of a year’s accumulation of doubt and suspicion on the entire issue.

Absent this fog-cutting clarification, the now swelling calls for Najib to quit will grow stronger in the days to the party’s annual assembly in two weeks’ time.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.