UMNO- self-induced rigor mortis
SAKMONGKOL AK47
I have written so many essays critical of UMNO in the past. Friends asked me why am I still in UMNO? How can I write many nasty things about UMNO and seemed to get away with it-why haven’t I been hauled up by the UMNO disciplinary committee or something and not ticked off? Isn’t there anything good that UMNO has done?
Let’s clear one thing first. This is the source of many of UMNO’s problems. Some people assigned to themselves the right to determine who should or shouldn’t be in UMNO. They then judge others in terms of their thinking and criteria. Pak Lah or any others can’t measure up to Mahathir in many aspects. But they are not necessarily inferior to Mahathir. They are different. They must be judged on objective terms, not the subjective standards of one Mahathir.
Najib doesn’t seem to do things anything right according to Mahathir. The old man is so stressed up and suffers physical debilitations.
The problem worsens to become person-centric. One person determines and defines UMNO. Inevitably, the right to be in or out of UMNO depends on loyalty to individuals and not on the political ideals, ideas, shared vision and so forth.
The problems become multiplied many fold, when UMNO ‘farms’ out the responsibility of sieving and determining leadership material to hired hands outside the party. These are the intellectual hacks and overrated audio visual and print media practitioners who arrogate to themselves the ultimate discretion of how should UMNO behave.
Hence there are people who think UMNO is the personal kingdom of some people and that the issues of these individuals exist to inherit the kingdom of UMNO.
What has UMNO become then? It becomes an organization feudal in nature where its leadership depends on being from the right loins. The leadership in UMNO is therefore no different from the method of ascribing extraordinary abilities by being conceived from a buloh betong, materializing from a cow’s vomit or suddenly beamed from across the terrestrial highs to bukit si guntang Mahameru.
From thereon, the majority of UMNO suckers pledged eternal loyalty to the blue blood.
This is the earliest symptoms of the inability of UN+MNO to manage success. For over the years, UMNO attracts a multitude of thoughts, aggressive and independent minded individuals, a vibrant ward of supporters, personalized political inclinations as success unavoidably do, that its continuity and longevity, depends ultimately on the ability to manage all that diversity.
This, the current crop of leadership spawned unfortunately during the Mahathir years failed to do. UMNO has generally failed to spawn ‘elastic’ leadership that is capable of adapting. Instead it has led to the emergence of a leadership hell-bent on preserving freakish control and one opposed to internal transformation.
I can only answer by asking why shouldn’t I be in UMNO? UMNO isn’t the property of the present crop of UMNO leaders. Some of them are there because of some unexpected happenstance. They have the right ‘bins’. You are bin somebody, therefore you are leadership material. This is a fundamental defect of UMNO’s leadership. Which I will continue to offer criticisms.
Secondly, I believe I have done nothing wrong to be the guest of the disciplinary committee. Finally, there are of course many good things that UMNO has facilitated, whenever there was good leadership.
