Umno secretary-general Annuar Musa says Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin must not be saddled with pre-conditions in appointing his cabinet.

"We must not say anything that is tantamount to putting preconditions to the prime minister.

"He must be given total and absolute freedom to appoint his cabinet ministers," Annuar said at a press conference at the Umno headquarters in Kuala Lumpur today.

He said this when asked if the premier should follow the tradition of appointing top government party leaders to the cabinet.

Muhyiddin was sworn-in on Sunday as the prime minister of a Bersatu-BN-PAS coalition, with additional support from Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS).

Speculation is rife that Umno had set a number of conditions on their support for the Bersatu president.

This includes for criminal trials against Umno leaders to be dropped, although this has been denied by Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who together with Najib Abdul Razak, are still on trial for corruption.

There's also speculation that Umno is pressuring Muhyiddin to appoint leaders like Zahid to the cabinet.

However, an Umno supreme council member who spoke to Malaysiakini on condition of anonymity, denied that the party's governing body had set such conditions.

Meanwhile, Annuar said that Muhyiddin will have a wide pool of talent to choose from to avoid the pitfalls of the Pakatan Harapan government.

"I'm sure the prime minister knows very well... that he doesn't want to repeat the failures of Harapan. The impact of those failures created more suffering for the people.

"I'm sure he will continue with reforms, improving the economy, create jobs, make people happy, and combat problems related to health, cost of living.

"He will have a very strong, very experienced cabinet, just bear with him for a while, maybe one or two weeks," he said.