How did Umno get it so wrong?

If one looks at the history of Umno, it has always been a party that gets it wrong before it can get things right. Only this time it may not have a second chance.

The refusal of Umno to go multiracial, even when it enjoyed all advantages to further the interest of all, led it to operating in silos.

It also enjoined others to do the same, leading to a host of parties that were racial and ethnocentric, which invariably, allowed the elites of each community to help themselves to the largess of the state, before they reach out to assist others with trinkets.

Even then the help is offered just before elections, producing the toxic politics of condescension that voters hated but quietly withstand

Of course, on May 9, even with heaps of questionable money at its disposal, it got it horribly wrong on the "mother of all elections.". The house of cards came tumbling down. But, to be sure, the signs were there.

I had warned on March 30 in South China Morning Post that a Malay tsunami was forthcoming (Najib’s the election favourite, but is there a Malay tsunami coming). I also warned that the national debt was a major issue (The trillion-ringgit puzzle facing Malaysian voters). In fact, I wrote that the size of the Malaysian government was getting too big (Najib can’t afford to keep his civil servants – or lose them).

On Jan 18, I argued that Dr Mahathir Mohamad still has it (At 92, does Mahathir have enough left in him to stun Malaysia?), which again I argued to the contrary.

While the reasons for Umno and BN's defeat can be many, with party Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin admitted he sugar-coated his narrative to please Najib Razak, one reason stood out. The government was becoming too cartoonist; which allowed Zunar to paint them in caricature, which they of course responded, with serious threats of long imprisonment.

But the dysfunctional nature of Najib was superficial grandstanding, which to the very last day of the campaign period on May 8, had him promising even more handouts.

Indeed, Najib had too many projects, abbreviated into a multitude of alphabet soups (1Malaysia, 1MDB, GTP, ETP, GMM, BEM, PBM, ECRL, HSR) that hardly anyone can understand, which in turn had the voters wondering if he was throwing magic dust, or cleaning the cobwebs of the old system - as each prime minister must.

Failed to deliver

Najib failed to deliver not from 2013 onwards but 2009 when the reins of power were handed to him by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi without so much as a contest. Feeling self-entitled, the gravy train just went wayward from the start.

With some 42 political secretaries at his behest, many whom often did not even need to show up in office, preferring to be the lounge lizards of various five-star hotels in Kuala Lumpur, Najib's fate was sealed. None of his "boys" could work, let alone strategise the party capture of multiple vote banks.

When they do gather, some took to chomping away on their cigars as if Malaysia was Cuba; or eating durians as if feasting alone was strategy. Yet while they lapped it all up, the narrative which they should have controlled, went into the hands of their political nemesis.

Take 1Malaysia, for instance. The moment a series of projects connected to 1MDB and SRC all become mangled and twisted, often beyond redemption, DAP had christened it Sapu Malaysia - not Satu Malaysia.

This had a huge impact of transforming the optic of 1Malaysia almost from the word get-go; making Najib's own brand an albatross on Umno, in turn, burdening BN with a credibility deficit.

When the goods and services tax (GST) was introduced at a steep 6 percent, every consumption had the feel of Najib just standing beside the consumers too.

The only way to get rid of the feeling was to root for the coalition that was against it, that meant Pakatan Harapan.

In sum, Umno was blinded by its own politics of race, and vulnerable to the iconoclasts from within their own ranks.

When the likes of Mahathir, Anwar Ibrahim, Muhyiddin Yassin, Mukhriz Mahathir and Shafie Apdal, all of whom were former Umno stalwarts, refused to co-exist with Najib and Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, their days were numbered, and their allies in BN too.

Democracy is a ferocious beast. It can turn on your enemies, just as it can turn on yourself when old allies refused to work with you. On May 9, the latter happened, and is still happening, with more and more defections to Harapan, knowing that Umno and BN is a goner given the slew of legal and gargantuan financial scandals that will last several decades.

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PHAR KIM BENG is a Harvard/Cambridge Commonwealth Fellow, a former Monbusho scholar at University of Tokyo and visiting scholar at Waseda University. -Mkini