Moving on, not!
By The Malaysian Insider
By all accounts, Datuk Seri Najib Razak gave a good policy speech when opening the Umno general assembly two days ago where he dissected history and told his party colleagues that the race debate is academic and it must strive for all Malaysians.
To paraphrase Umno’s New Straits Times yesterday, the Umno president told party members to move on. That rights are nothing unless they are actually used.
That the New Economic Policy (NEP) begun by his father, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, was actually a tool for unity. Not just a focus for Bumiputeras about their 30 per cent equity. Enough has been said about that although the government has pointed out that Malays have only retained only RM2 billion out of RM54 billion of shares given out under the NEP.
The Prime Minister and his colleagues in the party leadership are reframing the party’s struggles under a New Political Model.One that requires a lot more thinking, a lot more different ways to achieve the aims of the party.
Yet, the delegates didn’t really get what Najib was saying. There wasn’t much of a standing ovation and the speeches that followed was quite opposite of what the Umno president was talking about.
There was more talk about Malay rights. There was talk about taking back seats because some Barisan Nasional (BN) allies are weak. That it wasn’t Umno’s fault that BN lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority and four states in Election 2008. There was talk to relocate the proposed and controversial Warisan Merdeka tower to Kampung Baru as a symbol of Malay pride.
One wonders if Najib was talking to an empty hall the other day. Perhaps the delegates were at another hall too. Perhaps there is this wide gulf between the Umno leadership and its members, especially the delegates from the states who intend to say what they want to say no matter what the party president says.
This is democracy, of course. But somewhere along the line, Umno has apparently become a very long train where the locomotive has taken the corner but the wagons and passenger coaches are still chugging straight with blinkers, not knowing there’s a corner ahead.
