Abdul Latiff Ahmad

Abd Latiff bin Ahmad (Jawi: عبداللطيف بن أحمد ; born 9 July 1958) is a Malaysian politician who has served as the Minister of Rural Development in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin since March 2020 and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mersing since November 1999. He served as the Deputy Minister of Defence, Deputy Minister of Health and Deputy Minister of Human Resources in the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration under former Prime Ministers Mahathir Mohamad, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Razak from December 1999 to May 2013. He was a member of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition. He has been a member of the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (BERSATU) since 2019, a former component party of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition and now PN coalition and was briefly an independent politician after resigning from UMNO in 2018.
Political career.
Abd Latiff was firstly elected to the Johor State Legislative Assembly for Endau seat in 1995 election. In the 1999 general election he switched to federal politics by contesting and winning to be the MP of Mersing constituency in Johor, and thereafter served as Deputy Minister of Human Resources (1999 to 2004), Deputy Minister of Health (2004 to 2010) and Deputy Minister of Defence (2010 to 2013). He was reelected MP for the Mersing parliamentary seat in the consecutive 2004, 2008, 2013 and 2018 general elections.
Abd Latiff was dropped from Najib Razak's cabinet after the 2013 general election, and was appointed as the chairman of the government-linked housing development company Syarikat Perumahan Negara Berhad (SPNB). He left SPNB in early 2019 after BN lost as the ruling federal government to Pakatan Harapan (PH) in the 2018 election.
Controversies and issues.
Insulting UMNO.
On 8 July 2020, he said UMNO was an unscrupulous party in Sabah after its leaders jumped to Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu). Earlier, a video featuring Abdul Latif's statement in an open forum on the matter was spread on social media where he mentioned "Sabahans do not mention jumping but call migration and usually from Berjaya to PBS, PBS goes to UMNO. Meanwhile, Abdul Latiff's statement met with opposition from UMNO leaders who are now urging him to resign. After receiving word of mouth from UMNO leaders, finally he admitted his mistake. While reminding UMNO, the real enemy is the opponents and they should not quarrel with each other, he said he apologized if the statement regarding "UMNO does not work in Sabah" was misunderstood and hurt the hearts of many parties.