Umno at a crossroads

Annual assembly begins this week

A party in continued flux since the election debacle of 2008, Umno party president Datuk Seri Najib Razak made a reminder leading up to its general assembly today that it requires a “new political model” to survive and keep leading the nation.

Umno — like what other post war Asian political parties, primarily Japan’s LDP, India’s Congress Party and Taiwan’s Kuomintang experienced — faces the need to makeover.

Those Asian parties found support eroding after starting with massive public support and legitimacy for decades. These leaders of independence or formation were focussed on social and economic development.

Not dissimilar to Umno, they stayed in power uninterrupted, and in time became conceited, arrogant and corrupted organisations developing an institutional self-interest.

While these giants have had mixed fortunes subsequently, Umno’s turn to stare into horizon for its own future has arrived and that’s why Najib says a new political model is paramount.

The old development model of politics of dispensing development dollars in return for votes is struggling, as the results of Election 2008 shows.

While the formula still holds sway in depressed rural Sabah and Sarawak, where the dollar is king in getting votes and keeping the ruling elite in line, it is rapidly expiring in Peninsular Malaysia.

In urban and semi-urban centres, the Malays who have been Umno’s bedrock of support have turned to Pakatan Rakyat’s clarion call for change.

They wanted meaningful changes — less corruption, more accountability and transparency, irrespective of race, creed or religion.

No more Malays vote Umno to be “protected” from non-Malays in urban areas.

Umno’s decline in Kedah, Selangor, Perak and Penang underlined that shift. Even in Umno’s bastions of Johore and Malacca, the winning majorities of its leaders were slashed compared to their sterling performance in 2004.

Sabah and Sarawak stuck by Umno, and which is why every budget since has emphasised Borneo with development allocations.

Like its Asian counterparts, Umno faces the old equation — how best to survive the new political paradigm where voters see development as a right and not a bequest from the political elite. Being grateful is no longer part of the modern political ethos.

Political parties that still expect “gratitude” in return for putting a bridge across the river are living in the past. Some Umno leaders know this but most are still trapped in the old "development-gratitude" paradigm.

“We not only need a New Economic Model, we might also need a New Political Model,” Najib said when launching an Umno Club for retired senior government officers at his official residence Seri Perdana on Saturday.

Najib, the Umno president, also said the strategy of “politics of development” is no longer effective.

““The reason why people are rejecting political parties that have contributed a lot over the years is because of parties that did not change. They are seen as rigid and not dynamic,” he said.

“However, if we change and are seen as a fresh and dynamic party, God willing, the people's support for us will continue into the future,” he concluded.

Najib a good track record no longer a “guarantee that that party would continue to remain in power.”

He hastened to add that any new “political model” would not change the aims Umno’s original struggle.

So there it is — recognition that development aid no longer buying political support as it use to do, that voters are less dependent and more independent and more confident that they can manage without development aid.

In the 1970s the government had even refused to tar roads in constituencies in Selangor that had voted opposition.

In 1985 Barisan/Berjaya’s Datuk Harries Salleh removed zinc, wood and cement that had been brought in as development aid during the 1985 Tambunan by-election won by Datuk Pairin Kitingan.

These are extreme examples of how the government in the past had used development aid as a tool to secure the vote.

Umno therefore is at a crossroads — development politics is not delivering in Malaysia or elsewhere in Asia — therefore a new political model is needed for Umno to win public support and legitimacy from primarily the Malays and from Malaysians. - Malaysian Insider