Mat Hasan should take over from Zahid and rebuild Umno/BN

Umno was thrashed once again the other day.

It won only 19 of the 108 seats contested in the six state elections.

Fourteen of the seats won by the party are in Negri Sembilan, thanks to the lack of Perikatan's presence in that state.

Okay, maybe it's also because Mat Hasan did a good job there as state party chairman.

Still, spin it all we want, the reality is that Umno as a whole is dying.

The two big issues are Zahid's leadership as Umno president and the party's collaboration with Pakatan, especially DAP.

It wouldn't actually take a genius to figure out that if Umno wants to get out of its tail spin, it has to get out of both those issues.

First, Zahid has to go. I have no doubt about that.

A leader who has become a liability to the party has to be replaced.

It's immaterial whether he has actually done wrong or otherwise.

If he fails to handle the accusations against him and those accusations hurt the party, then he shouldn't remain as its leader.

I have been saying this from back then when Shahrizat's NFC cow in condo issue hurt Umno.

That issue caused Umno and its BN allies to lose hundreds of thousands of votes back in the 2013 general election.

It doesn't matter whether Shahrizat actually kept cows in her condos or not, the point is that she refused to step down at that time and Umno suffered because of it.

Then there's Najib who failed to handle the accusations against him, when he was PM. 

It doesn't matter whether Dr Mahathir was right or wrong in attacking Najib, because what really matter was that those attacks were handled poorly and led to Umno and its BN allies going into the longkang in 2018.

Zahid is doing the same as Najib, only worse.

Throwing people that oppose him off the boat is not helping Umno just like what Najib did leading to the general election in 2018.

I wrote about this repeatedly at the height of Najib-Mahathir war back then to a point that I was accused by stupid pro-Umno bloggers as being a DAP agent.

Najib only resigned after the 2018 defeat but it was too late.

Realistically, the only option for Umno now is for Mat Hasan to take over from Zahid.

I know KJ and some of the other rebels will say that's not good enough. They want Mat Hasan out too.

But let's be realistic, that's the only way it could be done in the present set up.

Mat Hasan needs to be brave in this matter or otherwise he will be remembered as being complicit along with Zahid in ensuring the final destruction of Umno.

Once he takes over, he has to try to bring back all the rebels into the Umno's fold once again.

Okay, I know it's risky to do that but all the Umno rebels that I personally knew still love the party.

I believe they can help revive Umno if given the chance to do so.

Then there's the issue of working with Pakatan, especially DAP.

Mat Hasan (assuming that he does take over the party's presidency) needs to take  Umno out of that and rebuild BN with MCA and MIC.

Umno and the rest of BN should stay out of the current administration.

They shouldn't be with Perikatan either.

It's indeed better if the BN coalition stays in its own bloc and work on convincing people that BN is the alternative to both the hopeless current Pakatan establishment and potentially scary Perikatan administration.

Umno and its BN allies need to stay somewhere in the middle between them.

Let Pakatan and Perikatan fight to get support from Sabah and Sarawak to form the government for now.

I believe that's the only way for Umno to survive.

Maybe it's too late in Perikatan-dominated Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah but there's still hope in Pahang, Johor Melaka, Negri Sembilan and even Perlis, Perak as well as Sabah.

Meanwhile, let Pakatan and Perikatan fight over Penang and Selangor.