The ugly side of Umno

The problem with Umno these days is that they have no idea how to be appealing towards the general public.

When even the Prime Minister himself is using crude words to harangue and berate the public for showing displeasure towards him, Umno as a whole have lost the plot.

For instance, take last weekend’s Bersih 4.0’s street demonstration. Conservatively, about 150,000-strong crowd had gathered in the course of two days to protest against him. But the first initial reaction from Umno is that these people are DAP members and they must be ridiculed, censured and verbally attacked.

They never saw the need to see these people as voters. It is definite that not everyone who gathered during that protest is a DAP member. They are ordinary people. They have the power to vote in a government.

These voters were called shallow minded by the Prime Minister. He even called them as having poor sense of patriotism. Umno’s media propaganda even went on to label these people as traitors. Ironically, these are the same people that Umno and other BN parties had to canvass for votes during general elections.

Do these people who sang Negaraku in earnest looked like they don’t love the country?

You lambast and condemn them, yet at the time when you have to throw yourself in the mercy of the public, you beg for their votes; throwing huge sums of money here and there just to solicit support in order to remain as government.

This is the problem about Umno which has not been realised every single time Bersih hold their demonstrations. They jeopardise their own chances and, it is not surprising that the parliamentary seats won by BN in 2013 is fewer than in 2008.

No wonder MCA is getting tired of Umno’s petulant behaviour.

There was approximately 400,000 vote difference between BN and Pakatan in 2013 which Pakatan won on popular votes. That is about 3.5% difference.

Pakatan need less than 200,000 extra votes against BN to takeover the government, which could be translated to gaining another 23 seats to become a government. Currently, BN has about 25 seats which were won with under 2,000 majority votes indicating they are in a precarious position indeed.

If we are being conservative and multiply 100,000 people that went for Bersih with 3 (average number of voters in a family), that is already 300,000 votes lost by BN.

Coupled with millions of new voters registering between 2013 to 2017, where the majority are the youths which Umno had castigated for joining Bersih, then the signs are clear to see.

It is time for Umno to stop being a bully towards any critics when the solution is so simple. A couple of the people’s demands that attended Bersih are, ‘the resignation of the prime minister’ and ‘a more transparent government’. God knows, almost everyone we know are demanding for it.

These demands are justified and easy to fulfill. Everybody knows the prime minister’s position is already morally untenable. The whole world knows it. Never before Malaysians had come across such an embarrassing figure desperately continuing to pose as a leader.

It is ironic that the fate of Malaysians is actually beholden to the prime minister, his loyalists and several other Umno divisional chiefs. It is odd to have less than 200 people holding Malaysia in this kind of ransom-cum-political deadlock. The majority of people have spoken. Usually this entails a change in premiership.

Pak Lah was replaced not during a general election but after a strong message was conveyed by Malaysians about a year after the disastrous result.

Alas, with much stronger message sent to the prime minister; via demonstrations, to his own social media platforms, in the non-mainstream media and criticisms by global observers, it is remarkable to see how thick a skin can be. Umno should have been embarrassed to have a president like this.

However, Umno is paralysed to the core. The members cannot even make any constructive criticism without being labelled as a traitor by the prime minister’s many toadies, flatterers and minions.

Some Umno leaders stupidly said that its members must use the proper channel to air their grievances but everyone knows that criticism towards the leadership is no longer tolerated. Incidences where divisional leaders obstructed proposals from the grassroots which are not endearing enough by the party leadership is common.

With many bad examples to showcase Umno’s utter sycophancy towards a much maligned president, there is no way Umno can be appealing to the public anymore, let alone among the younger generation.

Umno Youth and Puteri Umno, the wings that will inherit the party once the current leadership is gone, will be stuck with a basket of rotten apples left by this leadership. Unless these young ones do something about this current malaise, then beyond 2018 there will be nowhere to hide from your own party members and the public.

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