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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

NURUL'S HINT-HINT TO DR M: It's not about being forever young but being clean & fair!

NURUL'S HINT-HINT TO DR M: It's not about being forever young but being clean & fair!
VIDEO INSERTED KUALA LUMPUR - For an 88-year-old, former prime minister Mahathir Mohmad sure has enough energy to put those, perhaps even a fifth of his age, to shame. But even so, he is obviously concerned at the rather tattered legacy he will leave behind and is trying to repair it as much as he can.
Just a day ago, he launched his inaugural Mahathir Award for Global Peace and the first recipient was another veteran - Nelson Mandela.
But apart from age, there are no similarities between the two men. One is a towering icon for democracy, justice and equality for all. The other is often reviled as despot who goes all out to line the pockets of his family and cronies by ratcheting up racial and religious disharmony. Mandela is obviously the former and Mahathir the second.
No surprises then that, despite Mahathir's enormous influence on the ruling Umno party and from there on the government, the amount of publicity on the event was surprisingly scant even in the usually fawning government-controlled mass media.
Perhaps the hypocrisy of the Mahathir Award was just too much. Certainly, concerns were expressed that an overkill of publicity might lead to a raking-up of all the bad qualities he has shown over his 22-year rule and make the glitzy and expensive Global Peace show another big joke.
New blood needed
But Mahathir is not just another retiree out salvage his legacy. He is still very much in the driver's seat and in the thick of Umno's intense politicking and intrigue, especially with the party due to vote in a new central leadership in October.
Many expect Mahathir to use a proxy - perhaps Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin - to challenge Prime Minister Najib Razak for the Umno presidency. By convention, whoever wins the Umno top spot also gets to become prime minister of the federal government. Hence the extremely high stakes involved in the Umno poll.
Just a week ago at his Hari Raya open house, Mahathir gave stern warning to Najib that he does not think Umno is being well led by the current batch of leaders. Of course, this would include Najib.
"The party itself is not the problem, the problem is the people who run it. If you do not know how to run something, then the best organised organisation will not help,” Mahathir told reporters.
Mahathir also said Umno needed new blood and then fired off another killer shot, with Najib clearly in line of his aim.
"The problem is this... Umno don't like and fear people smarter than their leaders," said Mahathir.
"They will need to re-examine themselves, because the party has become old and a lot of the leaders have been there for quite a long time. The young people don't find the party attractive anymore."
Being 'forever young' won't help
From the other side of the political divide, Opposition MP Nurul Izzah Anwar agreed that attracting young talent was crucial.
However, to be able do so, a party and its elders must also make themselves 'acceptable' to the young. And this included Mahathir himself, Nurul added.
"I think we as leaders need to understand the importance for any party is the emergence of the young and not necessarily the young but those who embrace new thinking, politics that are clean and fair. And this can be done not only by the young, but also 'hint-hint' Dr Mahathir also by the old," Nurul told Malaysia Chronicle.
She was not the only one.
Another upcoming young Malay leader, Dr Afif Bahardin, made it clear that in its current form, there was no way young Malay professionals would wants to be aligned to the Umno brand name.
"If you look at the leaders who have offered themselves as contestants in the Umno election, it is like a nightmare movie. Guys like Isa Samad, Ali Rustam, Musa Aman - all these carry huge corruption baggage. The biggest joke is that for Isa Samad and Ali Rustam - they were so corrupt even Umno found them guilty of money politics," Afif, the PKR assemblyman for Seberang Jaya.
Malaysia Chronicle

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