Umno today : The Banduan, his Royal Kawan and those who will Lawan the Banduan.

In March 2022 I posted, "We Know What Happened in Malacca & Johor. We Also Know What Happened at PRU14! Enough Said!" in which I wrote this of Najib and Umno :

"What you see now, being played before your very eyes, is the final tragedy of a man called Najib Razak. This feudal juvenile, from an impeachable lineage, has stolen vast sums of money from our national coffers during his time in public office. He has been caught with his hands in the cookie jar. He is using that stolen vast amount of cash to try and stay out of jail. The plan?... For Umno to win Government at PRU15, and from there, appropriate government decision-making in order to free themselves of any criminal conviction or charges that they are now facing".

Najib Razak peaked in the Johor State elections. That was four months ago. There have been no other state elections after Malacca and Johor for Najib to win for Umno. Today, other matters occupy his twisted and sordid mind.

And what are these matters?

• Whether he can or cannot have the services of a Queen Counsel to manage his final appeal against his present conviction.

• Will RoS agree to Umno's request to delay their party election until after PRU15?

• Will Pakatan Harapan extend the current MOU to support Ismail Sabri with 88 additional seats to secure Ismail Sabir's tenure as PM?

• And that coming ten days in August that has been set aside for his final appeal against his present conviction, whose confirmation, will see him begin his twelve years sentence.

The sum of all his corrupt deeds now stares at him with that most fatalistic of implications: Incarceration.

All the positives he had after the Johor state election have now withered on the vine.

His fair-weather ally in Umno, Zahid Hamidi, once secured as Umno's president until six months after the next PRU, now faces a possible party election insisted upon by ROS, before the end of December. A party election that, by all accounts, Zahid will find impossible to win because the winds of change within Umno blow ill for him.

The incumbent prime minister, whom Najib thought would be a pliant and willing "yes man" to his and the Umno court cluster desperate need for an early PRU to secure Umno's hold on government and bolster their chances of securing a political solution to their legal problems, is now the very man who is insisting that the fate of Najib and the court cluster will be decided by the Judiciary - not Umno.

If, as Najib expects, all else fails, the banduan still has, so he thinks, a royal kawan in the Istana. That may be so, but even Umno big wigs are certain that for any royal kawan of Najib to give a pardon, Najib must first begin to serve his sentence....and only then can the process of securing a pardon for Najib begins.

The enthusiastic cash-fuelled hurrahs of "BossKu" are no longer reverberating anywhere around the nation's capital.

By any criteria you may wish to measure him, Najib is now conducting himself presidentially as the head of Umno....and even at times, as the head of the nation. A matter that Ismail Sabri, as the incumbent prime minister, is uncomfortable with. Ismail Sabri has done what he thinks he needs to do to shore up his position as PM and his position in Umno and by so doing, indicating to Najib that if push comes to shove, Najib is on his own.

There are enough factions within Umno today to make millionaires of any Umno member who is wise to the way how politics is played in Umno. An Umno divided will fall upon its own sword. An Umno divided cannot find any political solution to the legal problems of Najib and the Umno court cluster.

And for Najib, an Umno divided herald nothing short of political oblivion that will certainly lead to the beginning of his deserved incarceration for the conviction he now has.

The Najib that triumphantly led Umno to victory in Johor and Malacca is today a different Najib. He has begun to wonder if cash is still king? Is the pardon that has been talked about within Umno from the time of his conviction still being talked about as enthusiastically as it once was?

Who within Umno are his friends. Who in Umno are his foes? The lines have blurred as friends and foes jostle for positions and options in the shifting sands of political power within Umno. Alignments are being forged by those within Umno with old friends who are now outside Umno and vice versa. All being done covertly, so they think, and yet every move, every utterance, and every shift in their political positions and alignments are being telegraphed to many.

I no longer follow the cuts and thrust of Umno politics diligently. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is secured. Nothing is real and nothing is permanent. Anything is possible. Enough said.