PPBM vice-president Hamidah Osman expressed her disappointment that it had also been used as a platform to criticise former Umno leaders.

“I am thankful that it has popularised PPBM, at least,” she told FMT.

At the general assembly, former Umno president and current PPBM chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad was the target of speeches by the heads of Umno Youth and Wanita Umno.

Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin took a shot at the Mahathir-written poem “Melayu Mudah Lupa” ( Malays Forget Easily), while Wanita Umno chief Shahrizat Abdul Jalil called the day that Mahathir “kissed” DAP leader Lim Kit Siang her “darkest day”.

Hamidah questioned Shahrizat’s statement, made in her speech at the assembly, that Najib was the nation’s best prime minister.

“How has the experienced Wanita chief evaluated Najib as being the best? Is he better than Dr Mahathir and Tun Abdul Razak?”

“To me, Shahrizat may have been sleeping up there, and not hearing the people’s complaints from below of their difficulties and so on,” she said.

Hamidah also said the Wanita Umno meeting had not been used as well as it should have been to uphold the people’s needs and raise issues such as the rising cost of living and rising unemployment.

“The matter was not raised. It was used as a Mahathir-bashing session. It was a gathering that failed to raise the people’s aspirations,” Hamidah said.