Ruling Malay party UMNO’s Supreme Council convened for a meeting at 6pm today, but with some eyebrow-raising omissions.
Absent from the meeting were UMNO deputy president and former Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, and party vice president and former Rural and Regional Development Minister Shafie Apdal.
The meeting was the second one the Supreme Council has held since both Muhyiddin and Shafie were dropped from Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Cabinet on July 28.
Both Muhyiddin and Shafie were present at the first Supreme Council meeting since their termination from the Cabinet on September 9.
For this meeting, Muhyiddin is reportedly aborad and will return to KL tomorrow, while Shafie is in Saudi Arabia performing the minor umrah Islamic pilgrimage.
Also out of the norm was the venue for today’s meeting: whereas the Supreme Council customarily meets at UMNO headquarters in the Putra World Trade Centre, today’s meeting was held in the Parliament building not far away.
mStar‘s Izra Abdul Rahman reports that Najib was seen arriving at the meeting at 5.55pm, while Deputy Prime Minister and UMNO vice-president Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and other Supreme Council members arrived shortly before that.
When approached on Saunday with the speculation that the Supreme Council meeting today was scheduled deliberately to allow for discussions on Muhyiddin and Shafie’s possible ouster from their party posts, UMNO secretary-general Tengku Adnan Mansor dimissed the notion as having been seeded by those who wanted to undermine party unity.
Tengku Adnan also denied that the meeting was moved up from a previously-scheduled date of November 27.
“All concerned parties have been notified of the date of the meeting, and it was scheduled earlier to give time to prepare for the UMNO General Assembly on December 8 to 12,” he said.
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