Commentary - It’s about time Umno took off the kid gloves

By RASLAN SHARIF

Something needs to be done to stop the rot eating at the roots of a once near-invincible party, and this cannot be reiterated enough times.

We are just days away from what is arguably the most important political event of the year – the 2009 Umno general assembly, which will see elections for all but one of the top party posts.

The country is set to have a new Prime Minister after the assembly, with Umno deputy president Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak assuming the party president’s post uncontested from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is making way for his deputy at both the party and government levels.

It sounds straightforward enough. Umno and the country have more or less gone through this sort of thing before, most recently when former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad passed the baton to Abdullah back in October 2003.

But try telling that to Najib, who probably wishes it were that simple.

The road leading up to the assembly has been anything but smooth. And probably no other deputy president on the cusp of landing the top post has had to go through the trials and tribulations that Najib has gone through in the last 12 months or so.

“Embattled incoming Umno president” would be an apt description.

The latest test of Najib’s resolve has got to be the disciplinary action taken against several top party officials for breaching campaign rules, most notably the disqualification of Umno vice president Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam from contesting the deputy president’s post.

The Malacca Chief Minister was said to have had a very good chance of clinching the No. 2 spot, notwithstanding the findings of a recent opinion poll that showed Malaysians prefer to see International Trade and Industry Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as Najib’s deputy.

It is still not clear who Najib prefers, as he has remained neutral in public on the matter. In any case, he’s only got one vote to cast for the candidate he wants to be the deputy president, and the 99% of Malaysians outside of the general assembly next week have got none.

What seems to matter in this regard is that informal readings of delegates’ sentiments in the past few weeks showed Mohd Ali as the frontrunner in the contest.

So it is no surprise that his disqualification has got a lot of tongues wagging on a purported agenda to prevent him from becoming deputy president, and by extension, Deputy Prime Minister.

It is the talk of the town.

But such talk is missing the wood for the trees. The fact is something needs to be done to stop the rot eating at the roots of a once near-invincible party, and this cannot be reiterated enough times.

While the Umno disciplinary committee was delivering a shocker of an announcement to the media on Tuesday, Najib was at an event where he once again stressed, as many others have before, that Umno has to clean up its act.

“We have to clean up ... if we don’t change, we will be changed. It is no secret that we have to change,” he said.

It is no secret indeed. The very same opinion poll by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research that showed strong support for Muhyiddin among Malaysians also found that they viewed Umno as ridden with unsavoury political practices.

Specifically, about 61% of the respondents felt the main problem within Umno was corruption, more so than any other issue (“out of touch” came in second, with 13% of respondents).

And it doesn’t stop there. About 59% of the respondents also were of the opinion that the party’s internal problems – of which corruption was by far the most pressing – “jeopardises the future of the people”.

Now, if there are those within Umno or outside of the party who think the perception is largely confined to non-Malays, they have got something else coming.

More than half of the respondents were Malays, and of the Malays, about 75% believed that efforts to curb money politics in Umno “were insufficient”, and 52% that it was “not sufficient at all”.

The call for a clean-up and for change goes to the heart of the matter – that if people continue to see Umno as a corrupt political party, then it is headed squarely for the trash heap of history.

In other words, if Umno were to do only one thing to try and get back on track towards winning back the levels of support it once enjoyed, then going full throttle on a no-holds-barred anti-corruption drive would be it.

That means taking off the kid gloves and not showing any mercy, both to the giver as well as the taker.

Is the party willing to do that?

The answer remains unclear, as scepticism hangs heavy in the air over Umno’s willingness to go all the way.

The joke that continues to make the rounds is that if indeed no mercy were shown, the next general assembly could be held around a few tables joined together at a nasi kandar restaurant.

Some Umno members argue that the party is being unfairly put under the corruption spotlight.

Unfortunately, such things come with the territory. To use a football analogy, there are probably many more people who want to see Manchester United fail than there are fans of the club.

To its credit, Manchester United have recruited players who are some of the best in the business, and the club shows little hesitation in discarding those who fail to meet, or keep up with, its high standards.

More importantly, the team does its talking on the pitch.

The result is that even the most rabid fans of Manchester United’s closest rivals are forced to acknowledge the club’s awe-inspring achievements.

That’s what Umno needs, and that’s what it needs to do. The opportunity for a start towards that goal presents itself in the coming days.

The Umno general assembly next week is indeed the most important political event of the year.

- THE STAR