Ex-minister’s wife vents fury at PM after hubby revokes support

One of the wives of a former minister who recently revoked his support for Perikatan Nasional (PN) has vented out against the government, giving a series of complaints over everything from the emergency declaration to her husband’s political moves.

Several screenshots of chat messages by Haflin Saiful, the wife of Padang Rengas MP Nazri Aziz, were made available on Twitter, showing her engaged in rants against Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

In one instance, she said that she would not accept the Covid-19 vaccination.

“I don’t want to be vaccinated… until it’s proven,” she said.

When contacted by MalaysiaNow, Haflin confirmed that the messages in the screenshots were hers.

“I have the right to say all this. It’s not against the law. We have freedom of speech,” she said, adding that she believes her husband would not disagree with her views.

In one of several screenshots of an Instagram chat released by Twitter user Politico, Haflin poured scorn on Muhyiddin, and recalled her time at the education ministry when he was the minister.

Among others, she said Muhyiddin had “bullied women entrepreneurs like me”, before adding the hashtag “#Karmaisbitch”.

She also scoffed at a claim that her husband Nazri was incensed with the PN administration for refusing his request to be appointed as an ambassador to Geneva.

“Really? That’s all you’ve got? Ambassador post ni powerful ke? (Is ambassador a powerful post?)” asked Haflin, adding that Muhyiddin had made such an offer to Nazri in exchange for his support to form the government.

In October last year, MalaysiaNow reported attempts by several former ministers to land jobs as ambassadors in key Western capitals, including in the US and Switzerland.

However, it was understood that Muhyiddin had rejected them for the post, in keeping with a policy to only appoint career diplomats to represent Malaysia in overseas missions.

Haflin’s furious messages against the government were met with cynical remarks, some of which said her husband was no different from other politicians with questionable track records.

She repeatedly called the PN bloc a “backdoor government”, saying the Covid-19 emergency declared this week showed cowardice on the part of Muhyiddin.

When told that her husband too had supported the formation of the PN government, Haflin claimed Nazri was “the last one who signed the SD (statutory declaration)”.

She then claimed that Nazri was offered a chance to be both the chairman of the government’s Bumiputera empowerment agency Perbadanan Usahawan Nasional Bhd (PUNB) as well as the law minister.

“…But he rejected… because this government its not legit [sic],” she added.

Haflin meanwhile questioned why people were allowed to go about their normal activities despite the declaration of emergency this week.

“Declared emergency but everything run as normal. Then whats the need for declaration?” she asked.

She then claimed that the twin declarations of the movement control order and the emergency were due to fears of her husband quitting the PN bloc, responding to a news report on Nazri’s announcement on Tuesday.

Nazri, the former tourism minister, was the second MP to declare he was no longer supporting Muhyiddin, as a group of Umno leaders aligned with former president Najib Razak step up a campaign to bring the party out of the ruling bloc.