UMNO’s Incompetent Disciplinary Committee
Equally productive is to “follow the money.” Where do these guys get their cash? After all it was not too long ago that they (or their parents) were stuck in the poverty of the kampong.
M. Bakri Musa
Now that UMNO elections are done with, the raging controversies over its Disciplinary Committee’s decisions will soon be forgotten, until the next election season. It is a sad commentary that the party’s attempt at eradicating corruption succeeded in only creating more problems and aggravating existing ones.
It reflects poorly on members of the Disciplinary Committee, made up supposedly of the party’s distinguished elder statesmen. Its chairman for example, was a former foreign minister. They were given a major task and they bungled it.
Their botched performance reflects a more general theme: the dearth of competence and talent in the party’s upper reaches. That, together with pervasive corruption within the party, is what ails UMNO.
The internal affairs of UMNO would not ordinarily interest me except that the party still represents a major (though fast diminishing) segment of the Malay community, and UMNO leaders are also the leaders of our country. Until this reality is altered by voters, what happens in UMNO should interest all Malaysians.
Root Cause Analysis
That UMNO is rotten to the core is acknowledged by all, including its leaders. Unfortunately, that is the extent of their insight. I have yet to hear any reflection on the part of the party’s leaders, from Prime Minister Abdullah down to the lowest cawangan head, of how or why the party had degenerated to such a sorry state.
To date they have been content dealing merely with the symptoms of corruption. Like other human vices, corruption is infinite in its variations. Thus dealing with any one manifestation forces corruption to morph into other more sophisticated forms that would be even more destructive and difficult to detect or eradicate.
