The mantra, “fired up, ready to go!”, could perfectly sum up the mood as UMNO wrapped up its last annual general assembly yesterday before the next general election.

After the tumultuous period in 2015, the house of UMNO is in order, internal dissent is almost nil. Party president Datuk Seri Najib Razak said most main issues that could derail the party had been settled.

Analysts said the main question is whether the UMNO-led BN can really win back the supermajority, given that it failed to do so in 2013 when GE13 was already dubbed the “Mother of All Elections”.

“Nobody really knows how the critical fence-sitters will vote,” says Yang Razali Kassim, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.