Ibrahim Ali is bigger than UMNO
When Ibrahim Ali convened the meeting of 125 Malay NGOs at PWTC, it’s not them that got me worried. The party whose future is worrying is UMNO’s. UMNO’s voice has been taken. Its thunder is stolen. It offers no rain, now even its thunder is lost.
That reflects the ambivalent leadership of UMNO as a whole. Its credibility isn’t helped by the flip-flopping UMNO president who has since turned the much despised flip-flopping behavior most associated with a former UMNO president, into an art form.
Like Ibrahim Ali said – very sorry YAB President.
The UMNO president is showing us a new kind of leadership. He is following instead of leading public opinion; a wet-finger-in-the-air type of leader. It’s been a long time since I heard this idiom mentioned until Bakri Musa’s most recent essay. Apparently the ‘wet finger in the air’ is an idiom that has a convoluted reason behind it. When someone wets their finger and holds it up, he/she is trying to gauge the direction of the wind flow at that moment. Once they have this piece of knowledge, they could align their decision along with the rest of the majority.
Perhaps the UMNO president isn’t aware of this. His unthinking-thinking circle does not update him on public opinion that originates in the street. The street is saying, it’s easy to discern the management style of the PM- he invites people to say their piece on some issue in his facebook. He sees which types of comments are in the majority, he decides on that basis. Then he says, he listens to the people. Who’s zooming who baby! (I love Aretha Franklin!)
This blardy finger! The finger one holds out is the index finger. Maybe it’s the 1Malaysia finger, no? I have wanted to mock this one finger thing for a long time. One finger is not much help if we want to carry out many of our daily life’s tasks. And one finger sure isn’t enough for some other pleasurable and sensuous activity. I like the joke about the Indian passenger on board of Air Asia, wanting service from the air stewardess exclaimed- why I finger finger, you never cum!
Can UMNO convene a meeting of the same number of Malay NGO’s? It possibly cannot because UMNO has lost so much credibility that its name presently is a byword of hypocrisy. It possibly can’t repeat the feat in 1946 when the original founders of UMNO convened a meeting of Malay clubs at Kelab Sultan Sulaiman in Kampung Bharu. If Ibrahim Ali had organized his recent convention at the Kelab Sultan Sultan Suleiman, that would be an irony of sorts.
Kelab Sultan Sulaiman is in Selangor (well WP) which is effectively controlled by PKR. That’s already sufficient symbolism about the position of UMNO. Its historical link has been captured. But Ibrahim Ali held his Perkasa convention in PWTC, the bastion and inner sanctum of UMNO. That Perkasa which is non UMNO which now claims to be the preferred voice of the average Malay can hold its convention on a premise owned by UMNO, is yet another blow to UMNO’s credibility and its fast eroding standing.
