KUALA LUMPUR: Umno's win in the Nenggiri by-election should not be used as a yardstick to indicate that the party has fully regained the support of the Malays, said an Umno veteran.
Tan Sri Tengku Razaleigh Tengku Mohd Hamzah said that the party must instead prove its seriousness in serving the people to regain support.
"Winning Nenggiri alone does not mean that Umno will regain Malay support, but it gives an indication that if we fulfil their demands through our actions, they will then support us.
"If we prove that we are sincerely carrying out our work and not just talking, perhaps this will lead many more Malays to return to Umno," he said when met at the 2024 Umno General Assembly today.
Tengku Razaleigh said this when asked whether Umno's win in Nenggiri meant that Malay support had returned to the party.
Previously, Umno's Mohd Azmawi Fikri Abdul Ghani, won the Nenggiri state seat after garnering 9,091 votes, defeating Perikatan Nasional's Rizwadi Ismail, who received 5,739 votes.
The Barisan Nasional's candidate led with a majority of 3,352 votes, more than three times the majority secured in the state elections in August last year.
Meanwhile, when asked whether Umno could carry the momentum from Nenggiri's win into the Mahkota by-election, Tengku Razaleigh said the situations in both state seats were different.
As a result, he said, different strategies must be employed by the party's activists.
"The situation is different because nearly 100 per cent of the voters in Nenggiri were Malays, and we were only up against Pas.
"In Mahkota, the seat is mixed, and although the Malays are the majority, the non-Malays are also strong there."