MAY 7 — Umno turns 80 next week and the grand old party needs a redo. Call it a rebrand? Abandon race-first and embrace nation-first, or slip into decay and extinction. Sorry to rain down on the ongoing “Rumah Bangsa” parade, which is at least in its defence consistent with the party’s theme, to lack originality and substance.
There are various elements which require examination in order to provide a basis for the rejection of Umno in its present form, rendering the dilapidation inevitable.
Spoiler alert. It can walk out of this conundrum victorious, as the United Malaysian National Organisation. Change and still be Umno. With a massive upgrade.
It’s been OK all these years
Sorry, that mischaracterises the uneasy border Umno reinforces inside the country between its people.
Malaysians who are not Malays have never been OK with Malay-first, and increasingly neither are educated and worldly Malays comfortable with race exclusivity in politics.
A whole generation of younger and smart-phone connected Malaysians cannot explain a system which wants to divide its people as a nation building platform. It sounds an anathema to those above 50 but those below 30 in the majority feel so.
Umno can lead on this rather than spend time to persuade more Malaysians to adopt race exclusivity as necessary.
The adjustment can be seamless
Higher Education Minister Zambry Abd Kadir said on May 1:
“Bumiputera education must be approached in a comprehensive manner, spanning early childhood education, formal schooling, skills training, higher education, and a culture of lifelong learning.”
If he removed the word Bumiputera, all Malaysian parents would nod in approval.
Learning in the modern world with its modern tools and vastly shifted social dynamics is a monumental challenge. Why make the distinction?
Umno wants TVET, all Malaysians could do with more TVET.
Why separate Malaysians?
Your problems are my problems too, why not face them together?
Moral fortitude to walk into difficult conversations
Umno-run governments have never been able to dislodge unity obstacles like vernacular schools and economic monopolisation. They were unable because they are accused of the same hypocrisy held by their opponents.
A single public school system is the future, to get best-bang-for-buck in an AI-age education. However, Umno leaders cannot win the argument since they are not committed to a single system themselves.
An all-inclusive Umno has the moral standing to hold discourses and ask others to invest in the country rather than their race.
We are mixed up
Every year, the statistics are debated.
About how the official Bumiputera and then the Malay count climbs. It does.
However, by the year, mixed marriages are the norm.
When I was born, there were only Tamils in my extended family. Today, it is a potpourri of identities. There’s a bit of Raya with the Deepavali, if you know what that means.
And that’s across the country, mixes of all hues. An increasing number of constitutional Malays are not at ease with conscious efforts to separate them from their own kin, in policy and development.
There is more openness to talk about roots.
The country lives more in flats than villages, community dynamics shift constantly, parties like Umno cannot reverse the trend, only navigate it on its own terms.
Exclusive parties inside disjointed BN
The speed at which Barisan Nasional collapsed in 2018 proved that nothing but power kept them together. Within two months, Sarawak BN left to become Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS).
In 1972, Razak Hussein wanted to end partisan politics by having a single government of all interests, by expanding the Alliance into BN. Not unlike the Chinese Communist Party.
There were 14 parties in it when GE14 removed them from power. It splintered.
They reassembled in 2020 after the Sheraton Move, but when they split easily when they contested in GE15, it was evidence that the identity-first politics of BN made friendships only about interests, not ideology.
What type of coalition can Umno manufacture now, other than to co-opt all former allies into the party as equal members?
Only in a third of the country
Umno exists effectively in one-third of the federation. Two-thirds is East Malaysia and they do not want anything to do with Malayan politics, and Umno is only about Malayan politics.
The 30 year-experiment to transplant Malayness into Usno as Umno Sabah, began evaporating when Shafie Apdal climbed too high in the national party ascendancy and was promptly kicked out in 2015.
In the euphoria of his new vehicle Warisan’s Sabah victory in 2018 he overextended to Semenanjung only to get burnt.
As there was a glass ceiling for Sabahans inside Umno Malay-first structure, there was a worse ceiling for Borneo wanting to spread inclusive state-first structure to the West.
Umno is the vanguard against pluralism and equality which threaten racial supremacy.
Umno Sabah is only an outpost in name, in the last six years morphed into a Sabah-first entity, as has Bersatu Sabah and any race based party. Sarawak, has completely gone state-based.
Untenable sea and ideology separation
Umno cannot spend its way into the East anymore. The recent financial autonomy for Sabah and Sarawak means they can use both the physical distance and cash to stave off Malay-first ideology Umno intends to enforce in the Semenanjung and export to Borneo.
It is the West’s 165 to the East’s 57 parliamentary seats, but the divisive structure in Semenanjung led by the Umno DNA in itself, Bersatu and PKR causes perpetual and dangerous incohesion.
The country needs a national rather than an ethnocentric spine to sustain an ideological consistency in both East and West.
Ask the members
Unfair to expect a democratic party to change without a democratic mandate.
Why not just hold a referendum? Ask the members, do they fancy opening membership to all Malaysians?
If Umno members in the 1990s accept Sabahans, from locations they’ve never been to, why would they struggle to include their own neighbours into their party?
Was it odd for ex-Umno members to sit with the others when they formed PKR?
Obviously, there were repeated episodes of resentment but the party got over it, the members got over it.
Umno leaders might want to have more faith in their own members.
Some like race exclusivity
Yes, they do. They are also called bigots. They generate negativity in that their core explanation for all deformities is the presence of those who do not look like them.
They are also the type who pour bile senselessly on the Internet.
Umno will shed a percentage when it goes inclusive.
It also wins a percentage. It can only up its overall quality even if the quantity with the ins and outs ends up the same. A home for MCA and MIC members clamouring for a political base.
Let go the past
To have beginnings, there must be endings.
The Umno ride in its present form has run its race, literally.
There are enemies, there’ll always be. However, when defensiveness is the only value proposition, one is blinded. To not see those who stand beside us, who have by a function of time become our reality. Our comrades in this journey as a country.
The contestation of ideas ends with one idea sidelining the other, which is rectified at an election. The ideas are contested again and again, ad-infinitum, improving the country along the way.
The contestation of identity only scuppers relations. One no election can fix. Umno must mature into being a party of ideas and not merely a party of identity, for its own sake. To be a Malaysian party.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
