Mood swinging between bravado and introspection

(The Straits Times) – If there is a tale that spells out the grim public opinion of Umno, it is this one that a woman delegate recounted at the party assembly yesterday.

“'When I got into a taxi to come here in the morning, the first thing the driver asked was if I was going to pay with corruption money from politics,” said Haslina Halim, a delegate from Perlis.

Lamenting that Umno has become reviled by Malaysians, she said: “Where do I hide my face?”

This anecdote summed up the mood of some of the delegates of the Youth and Wanita wings as they slammed the party for money politics and losing its direction.

Certainly, there seems to be a more reflective mood than usual — not unexpectedly, since this is the first assembly since the Barisan Nasional took a beating at the general election last year.

But at the same time, there were also strong attacks on the opposition. A number of delegates, in particular the young men, demanded that Malay pride must be restored under the Umno umbrella.

“The soft approach is not going to cut it. We should try and take the hard approach next on the opposition,” said Mohd Afendi Yusof, a Youth delegate from Kelantan.

Mohd Zaidi Mohd Said, from Penang, said the people want Umno to defend Malays.

“If we can't talk about it (Malay rights), when can we? We can't say this, we can't say that. But the non-Malays can say anything willy-nilly without caring whether it hurts the feelings of the Malays,” he said.

It was, in short, mixed messages at the assembly. And that is probably reflective of the wider sentiment on the Umno ground — a swinging between introspection and bravado.

There is a sense of Umno having lost direction, but delegates also laid equal blame at the door of the opposition, whom they said were “misleading” the people.

Outgoing Umno Youth chief Datuk Hishammuddin Hussein, in his opening speech, attacked the opposition in extraordinarily strong words, while urging party members not to lose heart.

“Umno has gone through the same scenario in 1969 and 1999,” he told them.

Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz, who lost her Wanita chief post last night, also criticised the opposition strongly, saying the Pakatan Rakyat was a marriage of convenience, but she was equally critical about Umno.

“Umno is at the crossroads,” she said, adding that rebranding was not enough.

The mixed tone of the debate is an indication that deputy premier Datuk Seri Najib Razak's appeal to the party to be open to reforms may find some resistance on the ground.

He had proposed wide-ranging changes to the party's electoral rules to curb money politics, thereby cutting the lifeline of the grassroots which have come to depend on patronage.

In his opening speech on Tuesday, he told Umno that it stood at the brink of being rejected by Malaysians if it did not reform.

An Umno delegate, Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed, said it was a speech that would give hope to Umno and Malaysians that the party was willing to reform. “But he has to carry it out,” he said.