DPM to lose job in looming Cabinet shake-up, says analyst

PETALING JAYA: A political analyst has speculated that a Cabinet reshuffle is imminent and that Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin will be kicked out.

Quoting unnamed sources, Shahbudin Husin says in his latest blog entry that the idea of the reshuffle and Muhyiddin’s sacking was presented to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak a few weeks ago by officials of “a government psywar agency”. He does not identify the agency by name.

He says the officials told Najib that the “time for defensive action was over and it was now time to attack and shoot.”

The likelihood of the reshuffle, he adds, is strengthened by the fact that Najib was accompanied, in his recent visit to the Holy Land, by Umno vice-presidents Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Hishammuddin Hussein and not Muhyiddin and Shafie Apdal, another Umno vice-president, but one who has, like the DPM, been critical of the Prime Minister’s handling of the 1MDB issue.

He suspects that the three used their opportunity to be together in Mecca to plot a course of action.

“Najib is said to have lost his patience with Muhyiddin and eager to show that he is indeed a Bugis warrior who will fight to the end,” Shahbudin says.

He says his sources told him Zahid will be promoted to take over Muhyiddin’s post, Hishammuddin will be made Finance Minister, and Shafie will be shifted to a ministry that is “less important” than his current Rural and Regional Development Ministry.

He adds that a few other ministers will be dropped and among those slated to replace them are BN Backbenchers Club Chairman Shahrir Samad and Ketereh MP Annuar Musa.

He does not name the ministers who will lose their jobs, saying only that they are among those who have been “playing safe” by not voicing support for Najib in his quarrel with former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.