Is Khairy disassociating himself from UMNO?
Once a vocal leader in UMNO, former Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin today appears to have gone off the radar.
Based on Khairy’s media exposure, the amount of news reported on him severely plummeted from 319 news articles in April to 41 news articles in the following month (as of 23 May 2019).
Zooming into his daily exposure in May, the amount of news on him did not surpass 10 news in a single day. The last recorded news on him was on the 20th, which is three days before this article was written (May 23).
Today, UMNO is restructuring itself by cooperating with PAS. Yet, the former UMNO Youth chief is inactive in addressing matters related to his party. Whereas, his successor, the current UMNO Youth chief Asyraf Wajdi is taking the lead as an UMNO politician who talks about his party with 478 statements.
It is also noticeable that Khairy is losing his grip on the mainstream media, almost half of the top media which reported about him comprise of independent news portals – Malaysia Dateline, Malaysia Chronicle and Malaysia Must Know The Truth.
Meanwhile, UMNO Online only mentioned him in five news articles for the last one-month period. This figure is the same for Utusan Online, the alleged mouthpiece of UMNO.
During the Bicara Minda programme organised by Sinar Harian on April 29, Khairy was asked if he is leaving UMNO. To this, he responded “Not for now”. However, he noted that he would change his mind if he finds that UMNO is deviating from its original cause.