KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 26 — Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan had denied that party leaders issued an ultimatum to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob during a political bureau meeting this week.
He instead said the meeting, which was reported by a few media as being “tense”, was actually fine.
“I would like to inform everyone that there was no reason at all for the political bureau meeting to issue an ultimatum to PM Ismail Sabri.
“The meeting on Wednesday night, August 24 (which I also attended) went well even though there was an atmosphere of sadness surrounding the decision in (Datuk Seri) Najib Razak’s case,” he tweeted today.
Several media reports quoting sources had claimed that Ismail Sabri had been told to remove Attorney General Tan Sri Idrus Harun and Chief Justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat as well as seek a royal pardon for Najib and call the 15th general election (GE15).
The sources said the meeting was tense, and some of those present raised their voices at Ismail Sabri, who is also an Umno vice-president, when several matters were discussed, including Najib’s incarceration.
The political bureau, added the sources, was displeased with the Federal Court’s decision to uphold the former prime minister’s conviction and sentence in relation to the SRC International case.
Najib was sent to jail on August 23 after losing his final appeal in one of the smaller cases related to the siphoning of money from the state fund that he co-founded in 2009.
Several Umno leaders had publicly criticise the decision but fell short of publicly blaming the judiciary.
Umno president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has summoned the party’s divisional leaders to a special briefing tomorrow at the party’s headquarters.
Ahmad Zahid himself is standing trial on 47 charges, namely 12 of them for criminal breach of trust in relation to more than RM31 million of charitable foundation Yayasan Akalbudi’s funds, 27 counts of money laundering, and eight counts of bribery charges over RM21.25 million of alleged bribes.
