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Tuesday, January 15, 2019

UMNO IS DEAD – LONG LIVE ITS CLONE BERSATU: SAY GOODBYE FOR NOW BUT HELLO AGAIN IN GE15 – SON OF EX-DPM WARNS ALL MALAY PARTIES HAVE UMNO GENES INCLUDING PKR & PAS

UMNO as a party may be dead by the next general election but its spirit lives on in other parties, including those in Pakatan Harapan, said a former MP, who warned that this was a worrying trend in “New Malaysia”.
Tawfik Ismail, a former Umno leader and Sungai Benut MP, said this spirit is evident in Bersatu, the Malay-only party of the governing Pakatan Harapan coalition.
PKR, the party with the biggest share of parliamentary seats in PH, also has Umno genes, Tawfik said, despite the fact that it is multiracial.
“Umno lives on in Bersatu, which is absorbing its members,”   Tawfik said in a HELP University forum yesterday on Building a new Malaysia: agendas and aspirations.
Tawfik was referring to the exodus of leaders and members from the Malay nationalist party to join Bersatu, which has raised hackles in PH.
Tawfik also pointed to Bersatu’s recent annual general assembly where a senior party leader demanded that government contracts be given to members to fund its activities.
He was referring to Bersatu vice-president Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman who said the government should give out contractsto division chiefs to fund the party and help it win the next elections “by hook or by crook”.
Rashid was slammed by his party’s the youth wing, who pledged to fight Bersatu members who received government contracts through unlawful means.
Bersatu president and Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has also said the government will ignore Rashid’s call.
“Leaders like (Bersatu youth chief) Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman who criticised this, I don’t know how long he will survive,”   said Tawfik.
Prof Bridget Welsh says Umno needs a new generation of younger leaders to remain viable. – The Malaysian Insight pic by Afif Abd Halim, January 15, 2019.
Prof Bridget Welsh says Umno needs a new generation of younger leaders to remain viable. – The Malaysian Insight pic by Afif Abd Halim, January 15, 2019.
This is because like Umno, Bersatu’s grassroots leaders have a powerful influence on the party, he said.
“As a force, it is difficult to get rid of Umno, you can get rid of the name as Dr Mahathir did once. But at the end of the day, you need its methods to gather support for the next general election.”
In his first term as prime minister, Dr Mahathir built a new party that was officially called “Umno Baru” in 1988 when Umno was deregistered after a leadership tussle between him and Gua Musang MP Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah a year earlier.
“PKR also has Umno genes. All Malay parties have those genes, including PAS, which is an Umno offshoot. I’m not exaggerating when I say you can say ‘goodbye’ to Umno now but you will say ‘hi’ to it again in GE15.”
Another of the forum’s speakers, political scientist Prof Bridget Welsh said Umno’s decline started three general elections ago when it lost 30% support among its traditional vote base.
During Najib Razak’s tenure as president from 2009 to 2018, the decline in support was 20%, said Welsh, a senior visiting fellow at HELP University.
The process to fix Umno, she said, will be long and difficult and only possible after the next party elections in three years as it needs significant reform and a new, younger leadership to take it forward.
“I don’t believe the party is over but it needs significant reform within itself and a generation of younger leaders. It still has large section of support but as a strong opposition party in the current landscape, it is no longer viable.”
– https://www.themalaysianinsight.com/

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