Umno veep Khaled Nordin’s extraordinary dose of situational realism

 

From Terence Netto

It would seem that after 20 months of cohabiting with arch adversary Umno in Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government, DAP has not been able to persuade the Malay party to relent on its suspicion and distaste for the Chinese-based party.

Then, suddenly, on the last day of the just-concluded Umno annual general assembly, a speech delivered by vice-president Khaled Nordin indicated that Umno has not been impervious to pleas that it should discard its standard ethno-centricism.

These pleas have not just come from the DAP leadership but from wider sectors of the political community.

Khaled, the defence minister in the unity government, told the Umno assembly in his winding-up speech that issues of race and religion are outdated in the 21st century.

He said Umno should concentrate on educating the Malays, such that they would be equipped to make themselves and the country competitive in a technological age.

It was an astonishing speech, because it was void of the parochialism that is the regular fare on an occasion such as the one Khaled addressed.

Khaled was telling his listeners to discard navel-gazing – the concentration on race and religion – and look at the technological age the world is faced with and meet it with improved education and skills-acquisition.

Presumably, the Umno vice-president holds that ethno- and religio-centricism distract from the need to educate and equip the Malays and the rest of society to meet the challenges of a technological age.

Khaled was not telling Umno delegates to discard race and religion; on the contrary, he was saying that bondage to them would blunt the drive to equip the Malays and wider society for the technological challenges of the times that demand that Malaysians think and act anew.

He wants the Malay people, together with the rest of the citizenry, to be 

initiators of a new revolution for the advancement of the Malaysian industry and economy

.

One doubts that any important Malay leader has spoken in similar terms in recent times, and that, too, on an occasion normally reserved for preening and one-upmanship.

Umno’s annual general assemblies have been long on boring bluster and braggadocio, and short on the truth-telling and policy propositions that help in problem-solving.

Hence, Khaled’s dose of situational realism and his call for attitudinal change is extraordinary, given what passes for muster at these gatherings.

Other counsel that Khaled gave in his speech was that Umno should not be loath to work with willing parties in wider coalitions that can gain the support of voters for good and effective governance.

It’s not that DAP can take heart from the emphases in Khaled’s speech; it is that by sticking it in with the unity government when, overall, it has done little to implement the agenda of reform fought for over a quarter of a century, small signs of a mindset change appear in the works.

Vacant optimism, maybe.

But granular signs are what they are and must be welcomed and credited when they appear. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.