KUALA LUMPUR: Umno deputy president Tan Sri Muhyddin Yassin today questioned the basis behind the sacking of Gopeng Umno Wanita chief Datuk Hamidah Osman from the party.
Muhyiddin, in a statement tonight, expressed his disappointment with the manner in which she was expelled.
He noted that as a former Wanita division chief, information chief and Perak exco member, she must have contributed greatly to the party and the government.
He said, based on Hamidah's statement, she had said she was accused of attending an event with former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, a former Umno president and still a party member.
"I would like to ask, is attending an event with a former Umno president, an event which was attended by other leaders and Umno members as well, a breach of discipline?
"If it is, then many Umno members have to be stripped of their membership," he said.
Muhyiddin, who is also former deputy prime minister, said Hamidah claimed she was not summoned by Umno’s disciplinary board.
He questioned whether her sacking was made in accordance with Umno’s constitution and the principal of due process of law.
Muhyiddin said those who claimed that the party's supreme council can sack a member without summoning him or her to the disciplinary board, as in the case of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in 1998, "do not know their history."
The disciplinary board, he said, was only established in 2000, two years after Anwar's expulsion.
Muhyiddin said he was the chairman of the party's constitution amendment committee at the time, and had proposed that a disciplinary body comprising members without any key interests in the party, be established.
This, he said, was to ensure that there were no one-sided decisions made.
He said if Hamidah's claims of not being summoned by the disciplinary board was true, then her sacking goes against the spirit of Umno’s constitution.