The name of the game is change

As Ibrahim Suffian of the Merdeka Centre explained recently, Malaysian democracy hasn't fully matured in the sense that those who lost the general election haven't been able to accept the results.

Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed, The Malaysian Insider

Umno must change or it will be changed. It begs the question: who will effect the change?

Will it be the incoming party president Datuk Seri Mohamed Najib Razak or the delegates at the Umno General Assembly next week who will be choosing the new leadership bench and the supreme council?

Or if Umno fails to change, will the voters decide to change Umno at the next general election?

The change began this week when the party's disciplinary committee, a band of reformed former politicians, decided to take action against several top Umno leaders, most notably Datuk Seri Ali Rustam.

Unfortunately , their decision has been criticised as being politically motivated by party members. This is not surprising as the committee members were hardly reformists when they were holding power many years ago.

The fact remains that Umno needs to convince the voters that it is capable of change. And that you can teach old dogs, even watchdogs, new tricks. After all, the name of the game is change.

The issue is that money politics is perceived to be a major problem in Umno. It is imperative that action is taken to reduce if not eliminate money politics in party elections.

And Umno is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.

It is an unrealistic assumption that money politics can be eradicated completely. Members will find a way when there is a will.

Unfortunately for Umno, it doesn't have members who are willing to keep quiet about money politics in their party as compared to the parties under the loose Pakatan Rakyat banner.

That is the curse of having power. Maybe if the situation was reversed in the future, the perception that Umno is dirty may change too, I hope.

I believe that Najib is beginning the clean up of Umno to repair the damage of the last 20 years.

But he doesn't have much time. He has to move quickly to clean the tarnished image of the party and its supreme council. He will have to take action against party leaders who are bad to remove the unfair perception that Umno is bad to the core.

The majority of Umno members are good people after all.

Fact is, they have been looking forward to elections not to make money but to actually decide the party leadership. They were denied that for years particularly in 1993 when Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim challenged the late Tun Ghafar Baba for the deputy presidency.

The party delegates were looking forward to be liberated to determine their leaders. However, the liberation of their suppressed emotions and desires was denied when Ghafar pulled out due to a lack of nominations.

This time, once again, the 2,500 delegates will get to decide the party leadership even if they cannot decide the presidency. The disciplinary board has done its job but it won't decide the leadership.

I hope the disappointed supporters of Datuk Seri Ali Rustam will accept the decision and move on in the overall interest of the party. There is still a contest and they can still decide.

They have to remember that in the world of politics, fairness is an abstract concept at best. The question of whether the action against Ali is fair compared to the others who may have committed the same ethical breaches but avoided punishment should be put aside in the overall interest of the party.

The Umno delegates should focus on picking the right team to help Najib as Prime Minister and ensure a smooth transition of power from Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

They should be mature and help to lead the voters out of the dysfunctional democracy situation we have now.

As Ibrahim Suffian of the Merdeka Centre explained recently, Malaysian democracy hasn't fully matured in the sense that those who lost the general election haven't been able to accept the results. There is still a lack of acceptance of how democracy works.

I suspect that the real motivation behind his statement is to illustrate the emotional and blind hatred of the voters against Umno.

These people refuse to accept the political realities in the country but contribute to the political stalemate and stagnation with their negative message.

This is the almost impossible task that Najib and his new team need to overcome to win the hearts and minds of the voters.

He needs Umno members to consolidate around him. And he is looking to the Umno delegates at the annual general assembly who hold the party and country's future in their hands.

They have to think with their minds and not their hearts and choose the party leadership that can work for the country and is acceptable to the Malaysian electorate.

Or else the voters will not need much convincing in the next three years or so to finally decide to throw Umno out of power.

And leave Umno members to stop singing “The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall”.

That's politics in reality.

Datuk Nur Jazlan is the Pulai Umno division chief and will join 2,500 others to decide the party's leadership next week. He hopes they will sing a new tune and not anything from the 1980s.