I'm The Least Ambitious Among Politicians, Says Muhyiddin!

"I'm the least ambitious among politicians", said International Trade and Industry Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin in jest at a dinner reception here Friday.

His remark drew laughter from some 100 Malaysian students, professionals and government officials present at the dinner.

He made the remark in reply to a question from the floor on the possibility of him becoming the future Malaysian Prime Minister.

Muhyiddin, who celebrated his 61st birthday on Thursday, is leading a trade and investment mission to Detroit and New York from May 13 to 19.

The dinner was held in conjunction with the mission.

On a more serious note, Muhyiddin, who is also an Umno vice-president, said the biggest challenge for the party and the country is to have a strong leadership.

"The most important thing is for Umno to have a strong leadership to provide a better future for the party. You need to have a strong leadership as the profile of Malaysia's population had changed.

"This is the biggest challenge and the question is how to deal with it," he said.

Muhyiddin said Umno in particular and the Barisan Nasional (BN) in general would "hanyut" (drift away) if the current leadership crisis was not managed correctly.

"There's a shift in the people's mindset, so there is a need for us to re-engineer or restructure on what we should do to tackle this," he said.

As such, Umno and BN must understand the mindset change, especially among the younger set who insist on having changes, he added. (Bernama)

***** "There's a shift in the people's mindset, so there is a need for us to re-engineer or restructure ..." Muhyiddin said. The stark fact is that the people have seen the light, changed and have moved on, while Umno has been left behind to wallow in old-style politics and wonder what hit them.

'Re-enginerring' and ''restructuring' is wasted on the fossilised specimens that dominate Umno. Either they should hand over power to a set of new leaders untainted by corruption and the old ways, if indeed such a class of pemimpin could be actually found in Umno, or they should expedite the dissolution of a party now notorious for race discrimination and graft.