SEREMBAN: Negeri Sembilan Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan yesterday denied saying that Umno could stand alone and did not need the Barisan Nasional (BN) component parties to win the next general election.

“I never said we do not need them; that does not make sense,” he told reporters, adding that his words might have been misinterpreted.

“I hope the component parties in the state know what I said and not respond to it emotionally,” he said.

Mohamad Hasan said that the Negeri Sembilan dialect may have been the reason why he was misquoted. “The media may have not understood the Negeri dialect, ‘mampuih’ means gone not ‘mampus’ which means die,” he said.

It was recently reported that Mohamad Hasan had criticised BN component parties in the state for being ineffective and suggested to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak that there was no necessity to accommodate and provide seats for the component parties in the state.

“We (Umno) work hard but they hardly deliver results. They are unable to win anything. Whatever they win, they win Malay majority areas with our support,” he said during Seremban Umno’s annual general meeting in Paroi on Aug 1.

“There’s no need to give them seats; they want to become ministers; just give them senatorship so they can become senators,” he added. 

Mohamad Hasan yesterday also extended his apology to those who had misunderstood his message in the speech at the Umno meeting recently. 

“If that was what the listeners thought I said, then I apologise,” he said, adding that it was the first time he had made a public apology for the sake of BN,” he said. — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in digitaledge Daily, on August 4, 2015.