With the wind in Umno’s sails, Zambry charts a healthier course

 The Barisan Nasional sec-gen hit the most progressive notes among the spate of voices suggesting what ought to be the party’s future direction.

From Terence Netto

Political conventions are not usually the occasion for thoughtful pronouncements on an entity’s future. The temptation for chest thumping is sometimes too strong to resist.

It appears that Barisan Nasional secretary-general Zambry Abdul Kadir, at Saturday’s Umno convention marking its 80th anniversary, resisted well the tendency to gloat and took the longer view in a Facebook message on the direction in which the party ought to head.

Among the plethora of messages from Umno’s top brass on the occasion, Zambry’s was the most progressive in what he recommended for the party.

He urged Umno to become a civilisational movement that fosters an inclusive approach in the face of a complex political landscape. The approach should eschew narrow racial sentiments and hatred, and adopt unity and togetherness as its goals.

Zambry was emphasising themes he adumbrated in remarks voiced at the wake for former MCA president Dr Ling Liong Sik who died last month.

On that occasion Zambry showed he had mulled Ling’s contribution towards calming the roiling waters in the national political scene following Umno’s deregistration in the late 1980s, a crisis that saw Ling briefly and unceremoniously holding the prime ministerial post.

Zambry credited Ling’s understated touch with bringing calm to troubled waters.

Obviously, Zambry had mulled developments in the intervening years since the crisis and arrived at the reflection that Ling had exuded a calm that was the manifestation of grace under pressure.

In airing the reflection, Zambry suggested that the subtle collaboration among component parties that coalition politics encouraged made the airing of narrow racial sentiments obsolete, perhaps even embarrassing.

Taking flight from this conclusion, Zambry in his message to the Umno convention, recommended a civilisational thrust to Umno’s future undertakings, as if to suggest that Umno should jettison narrow partisanship for an inclusiveness that would position it as a player on the global stage.

He said an emphasis on education to meet the challenges of a digital age ought to propel Umno in a direction that renders Umno a supra-racial and supra-partisan party.

Zambry’s message was the most statesmanlike and irenic among the plethora of Umno pronouncements.

From indications of a surge of interest in joining Umno, particularly among Malays 40 years and below, the notes struck by Zambry should be what the party needs to rebuild itself towards its centenary after the electoral setbacks of recent years. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.