Communist Party meet at Umno AGM nothing new, insists Ku Nan

The unofficial closed-door meeting between BN and the Communist Party of China (CPC) during the Umno general assembly recently to exchange views was nothing unusual, said the party’s secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor.

Tengku Adnan said the CPC was a ruling party that was invited every year to attend the general assembly, even before the era of the administration of Umno president Najib Abdul Razak.

During the meeting, he said the matters discussed were the CPC 30-year Blueprint, 2050 National Transformation Programme (TN50) to be among the top 20 nations in the world, the One Belt One Road (Obor) and the uniqueness of BN as a multiracial political party which succeeded in forming Malaysia since achieving independence.

“Matters pertaining to ideology were not touched at all, in fact both sides respected the basis of the formation of their respective parties,” he said in a statement today, commenting on the spread of the photograph of the meeting on the internet.

At the meeting held at the Istana Hotel on Dec 7, BN was represented by its executive secretary Abu Khamis, together with leaders of the other BN component parties while the CPC delegation was led by the CPC translation bureau head Jia Gaojian.

Tengku Adnan said the CPC was one of the 20 foreign political parties from 16 countries invited to attend the official opening and delivery of the Umno President's Policy Speech at the general assembly.

“Invitations extended to foreign political parties to attend the Umno general assembly were nothing new, on the other hand, they had been made each year and the dialogues between the BN or any of its component parties with the foreign political parties were nothing unusual.

"Besides the dialogue between the BN and CPC, dialogues and closed-door meetings with other parties had also been held several times during the general assembly this year as well as the previous years,” he said.

Cordial relations between the BN and CPC began in 1974, during the administration of Abdul Razak Hussein.

On Sept 23 1994, during the administration of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the secretary-general then, Mohamad Rahmat, had made a visit to meet CPC general-secretary Jiang Zemin.

- Bernama