A brief history of Umno SABOTEURS

NEVER-ENDING WOES- Beware the power struggles, revenge of 'unwinnable' incumbents

UMNO'S ageless woe of searing power struggle to resentful humiliation of being dropped as an incumbent general election candidate is a constant dynamic the party has had to endure in its 66-year existence.

The truism goes that Umno and its Barisan Nasional partners have little trouble neutralising the combined forces of the Pakatan Rakyat axis but can almost drop dead by internal warring.

It's an affliction that compelled Umno president Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak to issue a tacit warning to the "unwinnable" incumbents after wrapping up the general assembly yesterday, the unmistakable ruthlessness in the tone of his voice a fait accompli for the "unwinnables" refusing to give way despite the evidence of their risky candidacy.

In distilling the resentment issue, Najib wielded a five-pronged scenario on how to kill your party: if you are not re-selected as a general election candidate, will you, wholeheartedly support your replacement, reluctantly support your replacement, refuse to campaign for your replacement, sabotage your replacement or defect to the opposition?

The immediacy of the 13th general election made the problem of rejected incumbents contagious, their ability to inflict damage of strategic losses considerable.

However, true damage has always stemmed from major power struggles high up in the party's food chain.

The intriguing backstory to Umno's disorder persist with a grander but terrible impact that is, unfortunately to the party, durable.

To isolate a starting point to the "resentment" backstory, look to the 1981 deputy presidency battle between vice-presidents Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and Tun Musa Hitam, the latter winning handily then and again in an equally enthralling 1984 rematch.

That fight could be regarded as the trigger of a civil war that sired dire consequences to party and nation: Tengku Razaleigh converted his defeat into a dissenting movement opposing party president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, hostilities dubbed Team A versus Team B.

Musa's untenable enmity with Dr Mahathir in 1986 led to a sensational resignation that made him throw his lot with Tengku Razaleigh: this unlikely tag team's bid to oust Dr Mahathir in the 1987 party elections narrowly failed.

Tengku Razaleigh simply could not come to terms with the defeat and henceforth committed the fifth of Najib's troubling scenario: the Kelantan prince left Umno, formed Semangat 46, allied his nascent outfit with the opposition for the 1990 general election and deployed immense influence to gift away the Kelantan government to Pas, a stranglehold too tough to break.

For all his "sabotage" against Umno, Tengku Razaleigh consequently made peace with Dr Mahathir, rejoined Umno but still unable to engineer the retaking of Kelantan, an irony that has not outlived its shelf life of loss.

But the title for the ultimate saboteur, which again invoked the fifth of Najib's scenarios, is still held by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, a scenario nobody thinks can ever be reprised for its sheer betrayal.

Anwar's 1998 sacking from Umno and later convictions for sodomy and abuse of executive power were the blueprint of Umno and BN's tremendous shortfalls, first losing the Terengganu government to Pas in 1999, and then in the watershed March 8, 2008 polls.

Najib rightly warned the "unwinnables" to gracefully release their incumbency if BN were to retain Putrajaya but thankfully for him, there is no clash of titans to worry about -- now -- that could inflict the worse damage.

But still, the resentment issue is disconcerting: there is no way to know if it might escalate into the magnitude architected by Tengku Razaleigh or Anwar.

But if it does, Najib will have to have the wisdom to disentangle the crisis with a Plan B to buffer some loss but secure him a wider mandate that effectively drives his future administration.

- New Straits Times