The Barisan Nasional bag of tricks does not work any more. Not the promise of development, not the threat of development withheld, not money politics, not the control over the mainstream media, not the threat of hudud law, not the threat of Malay dominance in peril, not accusing Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim of selling out Malay interests. Not even Umno’s much vaunted machinery to deliver the votes works effectively today, hampered by internal rivalries, weak leadership and a lost cause. Nothing is going right any more.
Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak must be a very worried man. He might have the dubious honour of being the first Umno president to become leader of the Opposition. “If we fail to deal with these challenges effectively, punishment awaits us in the 13th general election,” he warned his party soon after the loss in Kuala Terengganu.
But almost 11 months after March 8, the public still does not see what it is that Umno and its Barisan partners have learnt and what change the new leadership will bring. Just listening to the coffeeshop talk of who is leading the Umno race is enough to bring glee to the Pakatan Rakyat coalition. Some very “wrong” people are leading in key races, yet further evidence of how out of touch Umno is with the sentiment on the ground. It has so lost touch that it no longer cares for public opinion.
One Umno leader told me that when he asked Umno members during party functions in different parts of the country what Umno’s perjuangan today is, most are lost for words. They actually do not know what the party stands for any longer. Malay dominance seems so hollow when the Malays are rejecting you in favour of the opposition multi-ethnic agenda.
In Kuala Terengganu, media analysts reported that PAS, PKR and DAP displayed unprecedented cohesion and dazzled the voters with their unity, sharing the same platform everywhere. The PAS spiritual leader, Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat, even gave a ceramah in a Chinese restaurant in front of a beer-drinking crowd, it was reported. The multi-ethnic and multi-religious political agenda of Pakatan Rakyat is finding appeal in the Malay heartland.
Wait a minute. Shouldn’t all that be about Barisan Nasional, not Pakatan Rakyat? Who have been working together for over 50 years in a multi-ethnic coalition? Who have preached the imperative of the races living and sharing the nation together for over 50 years? Who have practised the politics of accommodation and eschewed the politics of zero-sum gain? Who have extolled the virtues of masyarakat majmuk and of muhibbah?
The iconic picture of Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Tan Siew Sin and Tun Sambanthan sitting, eating, laughing, and campaigning together epitomised that image. Yes, it is a romanticised image, for the Tunku, too, eventually lost touch with the Malay ground.
But no one can deny that Malaysia’s political stability in a world of bloody ethnic conflict is largely due to the success of this inter-ethnic political arrangement as epitomised first by the Alliance and then the grand coalition that made up the Barisan Nasional.
Now it’s all about me
What a history. And yet this seems lost to the many Umno people I meet, read and hear about today. Now it’s all about me, and the unscrupulous use of race, religion, and money to buttress the me.
I wonder if it made any difference to their thinking that 74% of the Malays in the Kuala Terengganu constituency polled a week before election day believed that “Malay political power was weakened by corrupt and self serving leaders”, while only 17% said it was weakened by “demands made by the non-Malays”.
If the results of the by-election are not enough to wake up the Umno warlords at the state and divisional levels, then, as many Umno leaders now openly admit, defeat in the next elections stare them in their faces.
That a newly-cobbled coalition of strange bedfellows can present a united front and work together as a team and sell their multi-ethnic agenda to a Malay electorate shows what an empty shell the Barisan Nasional as a multi-ethnic coalition has become.
And yet, the coalition has many comparative advantages over Pakatan Rakyat. The fact that it is tried and tested, that it has worked together in a permanent coalition for decades, that it has appeal across all ethnic groups, to women, to the middle class establishment, to the rural poor, to the moderates are all strengths that it has thrown away with innumerable missteps and conceit – only for Pakatan Rakyat to pick up these ideas and repackage them into a new winning formula.
The much diminished MCA, MIC and Gerakan are dependent on a much stronger Umno to lead the BN revival and stop the electoral haemorrhage. In the way that PKR and Anwar Ibrahim are the glue the holds Pakatan Rakyat together, Umno as the dominant party in the coalition must be able to provide leadership and bring all sides together.
But there is little hope that an Umno too mired in money politics, patronage, and ethnic and religious chauvinism can rise to the challenge. Even the number crunching that should have been done after March 8 is being done by others, not Umno.
The party seems oblivious to the fact that it has all but lost the youth vote to Pakatan.
Be it March 8, Permatang Pauh, or Kuala Terengganu, Umno has lost its Malay future. There is rhetoric to listen to the youth, but there is no tangible move to attract them beyond covetting the very visible and much disliked Mat Rempits.
This, while PKR, DAP and PAS are attracting the young, educated, energetic, Internet-savvy professionals who read, think, learn, strategise, mobilise, reach out to civil society, and are hungry for new ideas and new ways of doing things.
Where is the new blood that will bring vision, vigour and new hope to a grand old party that is disintegrating before us all? Where is the courage so needed to take risks to forge new ways of winning over the rakyat? Umno’s political base is evaporating from underneath its feet, and yet what seems more important to so many is winning the party elections in March, or making sure their favourite horse wins.
Meeting the challenges
And yet the party is still not short of supporters and critics, inside and outside, desperate to see it forge change as Umno’s survival is vital for Malaysia’s maturing democracy. All kinds of ideas have been thrown into the ring to clean up Umno, to strengthen and rebuild the BN to meet the challenges of changing times.
> ELIMINATE the nomination quotas and give power to the grassroots to directly elect the party leadership. One member, one vote.
> SET a limit to the presidential term to promote regeneration of new talent.
> DISMANTLE the Umno, MCA, MIC, and all the component parties’ individual service centres and convert them into a joint Barisan Nasional service centre to serve the needs of all in the constituency.
> CONDUCT all activities at the branch and divisional levels as Barisan activities and ensure they reflect the multi-ethnic reality on the ground.
> ALL appointments to decision-making bodies at the grassroots, be it the Jawatankuasa Kemajuan Kampung (JKK), KEMAS, or the local sports bodies must reflect the diversity within the community – ethnicity, religion, age, gender.
> BREAK the tangled web between business and politics. Party position should no longer be the guaranteed route to instant wealth.
> EMBARK on a recruitment drive to attract new talent to energise the party with new idealism and vigour.
> STOP the empty promises. Just do it.
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