Mat Hasan tells Umno to get real

 

Umno deputy president Mohamad Hasan must be credited for his candour in revealing the reasons why his party has to work with Pakatan Harapan for its longer-term good.

While campaigning for the unity government’s candidate in the Pelangai by-election yesterday, Mohamad opined that Umno was “drowning” and needed to latch on to something to keep afloat.

He said the party needed time to regain strength to reassess its situation by the time of the next general election in 2027.

Meanwhile, he said, Umno has to obey the behest of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to be part of a unity government in the light of the failure of any party to obtain a simple majority in GE15.

He said this failure compelled willing parties to come together to form a unity government in furtherance of the king’s advice that the divisive racial politics of recent times be reduced and national unity prioritised.

Inevitably, this coming together entailed the setting aside of an Umno resolution, approved at an annual general meeting prior to GE15, that the party should say “No” to DAP and to Anwar Ibrahim.

While Mohamad, the defence minister in the unity government, did not go into the reasons for Umno’s state of “drowning”, it was clear he was intimating the party must pay attention to its own defects while being propped up by the unity government.

No surprise

Mohamad’s opinion should come as no surprise to observers.

The reason is that throughout the 17 months (March 2020 to August 2021) when Umno was in cahoots with the backdoor governments of Muhyiddin Yassin, and the ninth one of Ismail Sabri Yaakob (August 2021 to October 2022), Mohamad was the proponent of views that were regarded as the most realistic, considering the need for a national unity based on recognition of the plurality of the country.

Those views were considered a foretaste of the ideological make-up of the next Umno supremo, a leader who would stand on the party’s primordial roots of Malay nationalism and racial accommodation.

In other words, someone who would stand on the platform of Malay primacy - as distinct from Malay dominance - but one whose eyes would simultaneously survey the national horizon, which entails accommodation of its plurality.

Former prime ministers Ismail Sabri Yaakob (left) and Muhyiddin Yassin

Mohamad’s remarks on the hustings in Pelangai suggest he is continuing where he had left off in the interregnum between the fall of the Harapan government of Dr Mahathir Mohamad in late February 2020 and the start of the unity government led by Anwar in late November 2022.

By a quirk of circumstance, he was unable to take part in the governments of Muhyiddin and Ismail Sabri because he did not have a parliamentary seat.

This had redounded to his advantage, allowing him the opportunity to sound off on themes that emphasise the need for unity in diversity and the allowance of space for the creativity of the country’s multi-racial populace.

Harder to sustain

No doubt, these themes are harder to sustain in the current times of the ascendancy of Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor, the PAS politician with a penchant for the divisive and the disintegrative.

But they are not obsolete, for a mono-racial and mono-religious nation towards which the rhetoric of Sanusi impel, would be the antithesis of the (from 1957) Malayan and (from 1963) Malaysian nation, envisioned by the country’s founders.

Only, they will require greater imagination and creativity to sustain, qualities that right now appear beyond Anwar’s ability to pull off, though it had once seemed within the erstwhile Pied Piper of reformasi’s easy reach.

Hence the national stage is open to another claimant with the candour, courage and imagination to transcend our fraught circumstances in order to realise a better future. - Mkini

---

TERENCE NETTO is a journalist with half a century’s experience.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.