Is Najib pulling away from Umno?

Umno president Najib Tun Razak is a natural when it comes to looking out for himself first.

COMMENT

The chicken have come home to roost, baby. It shows finally that poster-boy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is a maestro only when it comes to mouthing political nothings.

Yes, the man who got a 69% approval rating by way of a survey that asked very open-ended and impractical questionnaires.

But here’s the thing: notice how Najib is detaching himself from Umno. It’s a behaviour that isn’t at odds with his real political self actually.

Najb is a natural when looking out for himself first while those besides him will be left to slug it out among themselves. As long as his position and interest are preserved, he doesn’t care what’s happening to the political party claiming to look out for the interests of Malays.

He is what he really is – a hustler trying to sell snake oil politics to what he thought is a gullible and easily mesmerised society.

He has learnt that people are less enamoured with poster boy image and are actually looking for substance.

Hence as Daim Zainuddin once said “the age where you think you can just pay your way through is over” and the statement by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah that the “PM will not do anything new because I know this boy” are finally sinking into the minds of right-thinking Malaysians.

Those who aren’t thinking rightly include those highly paid civil servants who continue maniacally preaching that Malays will be finished if Umno goes.

So now Umno is brazenly promoting its 3Rs to stay in power – race, religion and royalty. This is the new politics that’s forming the basis of the transforming agenda of Najib’s Barisan Nasional.

It’s nothing other than an agenda to reinforce the Umno elite’s hegemony.

Smart Malays don’t join Umno

It’s sad really. While the Umno foot soldiers shout on top of their lungs “Hidup Melayu” here and there, the Umno leaders continue to pillage and plunder in the name of race, religion and royalty.

And so the new 3R mantra is adopted quickly as the new strategy to remain in power. It’s the new prayer said before the Umno apparatchik goes to sleep.

This is the Umno-spawned idea that must be destroyed in order to liberate the Malay mind which has been kept subservient and docile for a long time.

Umno can continue to thrive only if the minds of Malays are held captive.

While others are competing with the world, Umno keeps the Malays transfixed over the “philosophical” debates about the size of Anwar Ibrahim’s penis and his sexual preferences.

Umno leadership is going around the country senselessly spewing hate politics to stay in power. Everyone knows Umno sanctioned the Johor forum on the threat of Christian missionary work in Malaysia.

This is Umno’s emblem of shame – sowing the seeds of divisiveness in our society.

We have a prime minister hypocritically intoning his idea of 1Malaysia yet he is the one who fiddles while the country is burning.

Najib allowed the possibility of racial implosion in order to stay in power. Najib allowed the continued shaming of Anwar with sordid details of sexual trysts.

It lays bare the sad truth that Umno and BN can only stay in power on account of the sexual adventures of their adversary.

So when Dr Mahathir Mohamad spoke of the need to have smart people inside Umno with a view to putting them up as candidates, he was speaking the truth.

But unfortunately smart people do not want to be in Umno and Mahathir is much to be blamed for this.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but joined DAP earlier this year. He is a FMT columnist.