The Umno assembly: Welcome to the feast of fools

Hafidz Baharom

So the United Malay Nationalists met up the other day for what seemed to be a dressed-up annual general assembly that brought nothing new since they re-formed in 1988 supposedly as the new Umno.

Yet another rebranding procedure then, no doubt. But then again so is 1 Malaysia, right?

Meanwhile, all of us Malaysian nationalists looked on at hour upon hour of nothing more than a repeat of their best hits and misses. The usual same old, same old was all there; don’t mess with Malay rights, don’t question the Malay privileges in the Constitution and, of course, ban all sanitary pad commercials from television for promoting perverted thoughts.

That was, of course, from the firebrand bimbo wing. Permit me to say this; this was the dumbest strategy to win back the female Malay Muslim votes. Even Muslimah PAS were rolling their eyes under their burqas.

Meanwhile, the Umno chairman decided that it was necessary to tell off the Malaysian Chinese Association leader for questioning Malay rights. Is it just me, or does the term Malay rights mean the Malay race are superhuman, or something, in comparison to us other human beings?

In addition to this, there was even a call from the Perlis Umno delegate to create an ulama wing within Umno. Because there’s nothing really bad about politicising religion, right? What could happen?

Was increasing the imams’ allowance to RM750 merely an attempt to lift them out of poverty, or was that the government trying to buy votes usually given to PAS?

Then there was the Wanita Umno representative who pointed out that while there were 33,777 non-Malay teachers in national schools, there were only 2,245 Malay teachers in SJKT and SJKC. In fact, she even bothered to quote the statistics for the number of national schools (5,881), Chinese Schools (1,291) and Tamil Schools (523).

What she did not quote was the racial ratios that also take place in the placement at schools. Or even the performance of the teachers in accordance to race. Or perhaps in this case, the parents who are members of Umno’s perception of public schools, in comparison to private schools and why they prefer the latter.

All in all it was an affair with great pomp(ous) and vigour, with stalls in place making it more of a festival than a general meeting. If anything, it reminded me of Disney’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

The scene during the Feast of Fools.

Only instead of having a competition to see the ugliest face in all of France, what we had was who could mention the stupidest way a political party could fight for racial privileges. And I think we all can say that Puteri Umno and their sanitary pad fetish takes the gold.

But of course, these were all mere side shows to the main event.

The arrival… of Zizie Izette, of course.