Umno is never wrong, others are

Where are the Umno screamers and banshees when government-linked businesses are slowly dismembered to enrich a few people?

COMMENT

Umno information chief Ahmad Maslan is grossly and perilously misreading the ground swell.

Today, Malays attach blame to Umno for allowing the pillage and plunder of the country. Malays attach blame to Umno for the lot the Malays are now in.

We would like to ask Ahmad: when Shahrizat (Abdul Jalil) facilitated the giving of the government grant of only RM250 million to Dr Salleh (Ismail), did she and her husband think of all those downtrodden Malays? They didn’t, right?

Even after that, they didn’t think it was necessary to create other cattle breeders.

After almost a month, the issue finally blew up in her face, and she suddenly recovered from the mad cow disease to disavow any connections to the National Feedlot Corpoartion (NFC) scandal.

Similarly, when we paid an excess of RM6 billion for the purchase of the armoured personnel carriers (APCs), was the RM6 billion meant for the ordinary Malays?

Where are the Umno screamers and banshees when MAS was slowly dismembered to enrich a few people? And when we were caught out, what did we do?

We screamed this is a conspiracy by opposition politicians! It’s never us – always others.

If Ahmad listens closer, he will hear people saying: “Ahmad Maslan can shove his remarks up that part of his anatomy where the sun does not shine!”

Corrupt to the core

Umno is now associated with neglecting the Malays. Umno stands for arrogance and Umno stands for the mother of corruption.

It’s rotten to the core, according to former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

In one of the meetings of ex-ministers, Mahathir, the political sifu, said: ” Umno is corrupt from the top to the bottom.”

Mind you, it’s not I who am saying this. It’s Mahathir speaking, and Mahathir – the Malaysian Caesar – is an honourable man.

Umno president Najib Tun Razak, in the pre-assembly briefing, put in succinctly.

He said that you can now spot the Umno type a mile away – linen shirts, dark sunglasses (preferably Ray Ban), tinted cars, sashaying into coffee houses with eyes glancing around affixing on no particular person, but asking for attention.

My favourite reaction is to put up my middle finger – in salute of 1Malaysia, of course.

Because people know: the Umno types, like Ahmad, is an empty can.

‘Malays will lose everything’

Look at Ahmad himself? This height-challenged person is a braggart. In the early days when he became the information chief, he would begin his speeches telling about himself.

About how he, a nobody, was suddenly fingered out by Najib to be a special officer in charge of Felda and in the 2008 general election chosen as a candidate and going on to become a deputy minister.

Well, my answer is: maybe you have sputtered some magical incantations extracted from the seven layers of the heavens and seven layers of the earth to persuade Najib to select you.

Frankly, I haven’t had the time to fully absorb the inanity of Ahmad’s recent speech about Umno’s 3.4 million members.

I am presented with his double whammy – a speech about Malays losing everything (economics, politics, religion and everything, wives and children included) if there is a hung Parliament and if DAP comes to power.

That was a speech given at a forum discussing the Malay Agenda.

Malays can succeed without Umno

In case Ahmad forgets, a Malay loses everything if he hasn’t got education, if he cannot compete, if he is not equipped to compete and, most damaging of all, if Malays are paternally cocooned.

Malays don’t lose if they cut the umbilical cords with Umno. Did Muslims decimate when the Holy Prophet died?

The hard and bitter truths that Ahmad and other Umno leaders need to realise is that Malay interests can be articulated and fought on any political platform.

The Malays in PAS can do it. Those in PKR can do it.

And I suspect the Malays in DAP can do even better since Chinese interests are fiercely articulated there such that, if a Malay were in DAP, he will not be restrained if he were to champion real Malay interests and fears.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman and a FMT columnist.