BLUNT and to the point best describe the speech by the deputy prime minister and Umno deputy president when officiating the simultaneous opening of the Wanita Umno, Umno Youth and Puteri Umno meetings on Tuesday night. A palpable urgency ran throughout; warning, exhorting and outlining. He cautioned about the clear message emanating from recent general elections, in particular, the 12th and 13th General Elections (GE12 and GE13), which demands the rejuvenation of the party if it is to stay relevant and in power. He encouraged his audience to internalise the problems, which is enumerated clearly as the concerns of young Malaysians. He then went on to outline seven steps to undertake in order that Umno continues to be the party of choice. Not beating about the bush, he talked of how today, nationalism has been overtaken by liberalism. He pointed out, too, the challenges of secularism to Islam, the other pillar of the Umno ideological thrust.
His speech, themed “Re-engineering Change, Facing Time”, sought to straddle the interests of rural Malays while yet, tend to the needs of modernity. He illustrated this using the GE13 results, which saw the support for the Barisan Nasional coalition, built mainly on Umno’s strength in the Malay rural constituencies. The rejection by urban Malays was hard to ignore. While emphasising the importance of maintaining the constitutional construct of the country — Islam as the official religion, the position of the Malay rulers, Malay as the unifying national language, the need to better manage the Malay agenda — the message of national unity was unequivocal. Umno in government works to not only promote the wellbeing of its political constituency — the Malays. It seeks, too, to address problems in a non-partisan fashion. For example, it was pointed out that while Malays and Bumiputeras make up over 60 per cent of the bottom 40 per cent in terms of income, solutions will be universal without regard for race or creed.
But Umno is a Malay party. In electoral terms, it must address the issues Malays have with it. The disaffection of the young is about a party perceived as suffering from a trust deficit, feudal, steeped in yes-men and women, controlled by warlords and pervaded by a culture of patronage. Towards overcoming these prejudices, the Umno deputy president urged a re-engineering of the party through the seven steps that include producing credible young leaders. Looking for and identifying them is the imperative. They then have to be nurtured through capability-enabling modules that exploit information and communication technology as a means to bring them closer to voters. None of these moves can be effective in the absence of monitoring, hence, the need to form an inspectorate institution reporting to the party’s top echelon. However, a reformed party must come with a new mindset. Finally, all these would come to nought if the Malays did not value their votes. Hence, the importance of getting every eligible Malay onto the electoral roll.