The uglier side of Umno

It is comical to see the Prime Minister acting all surprised and touched by the turn out of the ‘Malay Red Rally’ yesterday.

This pre-meditated theatrics did not go unnoticed by the public. Note that only last week he said that Umno is not endorsing the rally.

But the rally itself was organised by Umno stalwarts, attended by Umno deputy ministers and at least one minister, and where Umno members from all over the peninsular were instructed to go and ferried into the city. Yet, the Prime Minister had the gall to be ‘overwhelmed’ by the support?

If there is a prime case of manufacturing your own propaganda and believing it too much, then this is it.

The public knows that the rally was organised under the pretext of shoring support for the embattled Prime Minister. Those who came were largely malays from the Umno party. Basically, less than 2% of Umno’s 3 million members went to Padang Merbok yesterday.

Are the sycophants now patting themselves on the back for delivering the rented supporters to this staged rally for the Prime Minister? However, a few supporters complained they did not get the money they were promised. Hopefully they did get it like the rest of the mob.

It is a pity that instead of celebrating diversity on Malaysia Day, Umno chose to organise a racially charged demonstration that hurled abuse and profanity to the non-malays, particularly the chinese.

In the previous article ‘The Ugly Side of Umno’, we did mention how Umno do not know how to be attractive to voters. And the rally yesterday had shown that they are totally clueless in scoring brownie points from the public.

We wrote:

Conservatively, about 150,000-strong crowd had gathered in the course of two days to protest against him. But the first initial reaction from Umno is that these people are DAP members and they must be ridiculed, censured and verbally attacked.

They never saw the need to see these people as voters. It is definite that not everyone who gathered during that protest is a DAP member. They are ordinary people. They have the power to vote in a government.

These voters were called shallow minded by the Prime Minister. He even called them as having poor sense of patriotism. Umno’s media propaganda even went on to label these people as traitors. Ironically, these are the same people that Umno and other BN parties had to canvass for votes during general elections.

Instead of taking the high road and address the demands of Bersih 4 two weeks ago, Umno  organised a counter rally to harangue the public.

No wonder two other main components of Barisan Nasional were dead set against this rally. MCA and MIC were against it claiming “that the timing of the rally is not right, and contains racial undertones. It can jeopardise racial relations and can affect economic growth due to the tension”.

Yet the BN Chairman cum-Prime Minister who is also the Umno President could only muster a meek ‘agree to disagree’ declaration during the coalition’s supreme council meeting. This is akin to another ‘agree to disagree’ fiasco amongPakatan Rakyat’s component parties on the issues of Hudud back in 2011.

What have ‘agree to disagree’ brought on to Pakatan Rakyat since then?

True enough, the rally was filled with instances of profanity, racial threats and violence.

Barisan Nasional, who had worked under the consensus system for the longest time, are being destroyed by someone who is facing leadership problems of his own; leading a lacklustre administration and condemned by domestic and international communities over his personal corruption scandal.

MCA and MIC are tasked in getting the non-malays to support Barisan Nasional yet Umno is trying very hard not to get the votes from these group of people. Former Umno presidents would have never condoned such rally. It will have a negative impact for the whole of Barisan Nasional. One must learn from history in order to be clear on this concept of power sharing and tolerance.

Even naming the rally as ‘Himpunan Maruah Melayu’ is a misnomer since those who attended are just  Umno supporters who have no qualms that their President have received RM2.6 billion in his personal bank accounts. In reality, the Umno malays are suffering a dent in their dignity when their ultimate leader is involved in such practice. They should be ashamed of themselves for showing support for this kind of leader. Their only saving grace is the fact that they are stupidly oblivious to how the greater majority (malays and non-malays alike) are looking towards them.

Smearing Malaysia Day with such rally just to hide the elephant in the room is a tactic of desperate men, afraid of losing power and position. Too bad they believe they are winning in the perception battle.

When the next general election comes, when the votes from non-malays dwindle to less than 5%, please do not squeak your shock with that pathetic ‘apa lagi cina mahu’ again when you should bloody well know why they will never vote you by then. -jebatmustdie