Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin lobbed a snide comeback at Semporna Umno division, saying he is not aware of the "security issues" behind its decision to cancel party president Najib Abdul Razak’s invite to its annual general meeting.

"That was the decision of Semporna division. I don't know what the security issues are. What I know is there are many pirates there," he told reporters at a press conference in the Umno building today.

On Tuesday, ousted minister Shafie Apdal's Semporna Umno division  retracted its invitation to Najib in favour of party deputy Muhyiddin Yassin.

This is said to be over fears that Najib's presence at the division AGM on Aug 15 may cause the situation to spiral out of control .

Khairy, however, also hit out at several Umno bloggers who campaigned for Muhyiddin’s resignation from his deputy president’s post as the latter was seen to contradict Umno No 1 Najib on issues such as the 1MDB scandal and grassroots concerns.

The youth and sports minister backed both Muhyiddin and Shafie (left and right in photo, respectively ), saying that the two leaders should be respected as they are still deputy and vice-president of the Malay party.

"There is no problem in inviting Muhyiddin. In fact, it is an honour to have a deputy president officiating the division meeting.

"Every criticism on him (Muhyiddin) is not smart as it allows the cracks in Umno to widen. I hope those who attack him would stop," he said.

'More youth candidates in S'wak election'

Meanwhile, on another matter, Khairy announced that BN youth will start their campaign for the Sarawak state election by launching the BN Youth volunteers group in September.

He said the programme is also open to youth volunteers who are not in BN to join them in various programmes ahead of the Sarawak election.

Khairy also said he hoped BN Sarawak will field more youths in the election, slated for early next year.

"According to the briefing by Sarawak BN Youth, the young generation is very favourable to the new leadership under Chief Minister Adenan Satem. We hope that would translate to bigger support for BN as a party.

"We hope the leadership would weigh in the possibility of fielding more youths in this election," he said.

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