KUALA LUMPUR – The statutory declarations (SDs) that led to a major purge within Bersatu were not a conspiracy to topple party president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, but a desperate internal plea to prevent him from alienating PAS by openly demanding the premiership.
This was revealed by sacked Bersatu Supreme Council member Datuk Wan Saiful Wan Jan, who claimed that Muhyiddin personally refused to even look at the document or listen to his explanation, only to later use the SDs as justification to launch disciplinary action against him and other party leaders.
The explosive disclosure was made on the Trick Lama podcast yesterday in a conversation with hosts and Big Boom Media’s Group Executive Director Datuk Ahirudin Attan (Rocky Bru) and Scoop Editor in Chief Terence Fernandez, where Wan Saiful detailed the events leading up to the party’s Annual General Meeting (AGM).
According to the Tasek Gelugor MP, the SDs were collected from party leaders to formally communicate a single, crucial message: do not bring the motion to name Muhyiddin as the Prime Minister candidate to the AGM floor.
“The purpose of the SD was to ask Tan Sri Muhyiddin and his inner circle not to bring a motion that could crack our relationship within Perikatan Nasional (PN),” Wan Saiful explained.
He said the move was driven by a need to respect Bersatu’s main coalition partner, PAS, arguing that as a “small party,” Bersatu was in no position to publicly make demands that would “provoke” its allies.
“We are a small party, but we want to make demands openly, to force our friends in PN to acquiesce to our wishes,” he said, adding that such sensitive matters should have been discussed privately within the coalition.
Wan Saiful recounted how he attempted to explain this directly to Muhyiddin following a Supreme Council meeting, just two days before the AGM.
“I brought the SDs to the meeting. After it ended, I walked straight to Tan Sri. There is a video of me talking to him, holding the papers,” he said.
“I said, ‘Tan Sri, can we go to your office for a moment? I want to show you this document.’ He said, ‘Never mind, never mind. I will call you when I have the time.’” That call never came. Instead, Wan Saiful said, the narrative was “twisted by certain parties,” and Muhyiddin himself addressed the SDs at the AGM, framing them as a plot to overthrow him.
“He refused to hear the actual contents of the SD,” Wan Saiful lamented.
“He mentioned it in the AGM, saying, ‘I heard there is an effort to bring me down by collecting SDs.’ That’s not true.” Wan Saiful’s colleague, suspended Machang MP Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal, supported the claim, explaining that openly lobbying for the top post is culturally offensive to PAS.
“In PAS, the culture is not to ask for positions,” Wan Fayhsal said. “When Bersatu was so eager to name a poster boy, a PM candidate, it showed we did not understand the dynamics of our coalition.”
The duo argued that their actions were proven correct when, following the Bersatu AGM, PAS held its own muktamar and passed a resolution for the party to lead PN, a direct reaction to what they saw as Bersatu’s presumptuousness. – October 24, 2025