Meeting Ibrahim Ali – part 2

I find my meeting with Ibrahim Ali unnerving to many people. This is unnecessary. I am trying to assess Ibrahim Ali as objectively as possible. To answer one commentator- I have no problem in meeting up with Anwar Ibrahim if he is available. It will be motivated by the same urge to seek objectivity.

In answer to one commentator- what kind of warped logic has it that because I went to see Ibrahim, therefore he, Ibrahim is one up on me? Up one in what terms? My own sense of intelligence remains intact. The same fire burns in the belly. Indeed I have always regarded as the finest victory, when one dances in one’s adversary’s ring. Ibrahim to me remains as a vacuous chatterbox as before.

But even while we want to dismiss Ibrahim as a political quack offering snake oil remedies, can you dismiss the crowd that attends his conventions? The people in skull caps, in baju Melayus? The golden citizens carrying in their bosoms the hopes and fears of an earlier generation that have remained still unfulfilled? People who have given their trust in UMNO? These represent the living Malays. If I were to dismiss them and if PM Najib is oblivious to them, then UMNO is gone.

So, better to meet up Ibrahim and discover what has he done to attract the Malay crowd? Each step forward he makes means one step backwards UMNO takes.

I want to say that he, Ibrahim Ali seems ok because he is so. Even so, I have no problem in saying things about how he looks like, directly to him. If you have met Ibrahim then you know he has a thick skin. Say anything to him, he behaves nonplussed. Unless, he assumes a different personality as a front, he does come across as a personable fellow.

But I wasn’t planning to adjudicate a male beauty contest. Like the Merdeka Centre research that says Najib is popular among the jobless.

I wanted to pry open his thinking. To me this meeting will serve my purpose. My purpose being to show really that UMNO diminishes as Perkasa expands. Whose fault will that be?

I say it’s the UMNO leadership’s fault. The leadership as a whole is vacuous and incorrigible about what to do that can restore UMNO. The rot has overtaken and overwhelmed the top leadership such that asking the rotten leadership to correct itself is futile. While the rot does indeed start at the head, it would be sheer stupidity to ask the rotten leadership to heal itself. Hoi! The correction must come from the broad masses- the ordinary members beginning at branch levels.

The only course open is to change the top leadership as radical as possible. That can be done not by the top leadership as in top down restructuring, but at grassroots levels. Leadership quality at the grassroots level must change and be changed so that new values, demands, impose natural forces of change within UMNO.