Karim Raslan's take in his column 'Ceritalah' in The Star

Tuesday April 22, 2008

The Age of the Sledgehammer
Ceritalah By KARIM RASLAN

Umno leaders should learn from Asia's other once dominant parties who lost office but were able to reinvent themselves and regain power.

AS SOMEONE with a long family tradition linked to Umno and who counts many party leaders as my friends, the results of the last General Election were an enormous surprise.

I simply could not believe that PKR, PAS and DAP could manage the states they won.
Inspired by these concerns, I hit the road to interview the new political players. I had to find out for myself what they were like, to set my mind at ease.

While I had no idea what to expect, I must admit that the leaders of the new Pakatan Rakyat states have impressed me with their seriousness and integrity.

Even more remarkable was the company I found myself in when I ventured out of Damansara Heights into gritty Puchong. I ended up at a vast election thanksgiving dinner sitting around a table with Karpal Singh, Gobind Singh Deo, their respective wives and Theresa Kok.

What a difference one day's vote can make! I never thought that I would one day end up sandwiched by a coterie of DAP leaders.

But as the physically (though not caustically) weakened Karpal was wheeled in, and I saw the warmth and admiration with which he was greeted, I suddenly got a feeling of how grounded the leaders of the Pakatan are with Malaysians at large.

This is in contrast to my increasing disappointment with Umno and the Barisan Nasional. What are we to make of the backbiting, racialist chest beating and general turmoil that have beset the coalition since the last general election?

Frankly, I'm beginning to wish that the Barisan had lost on March 8. In being able to hold on to power, the ruling coalition is still deluding itself that it’s business as usual. It appears to feel that it can continue to rule without a total overhaul of its policies and guiding principles.

Umno leaders should be learning from Asia's other once-dominant parties who lost office but were able to reinvent themselves and regain the crucible of power. We all know the names that are being bandied about by pundits: Taiwan's Kuomintang, India's Congress Party of India and Indonesia's Golkar.

The Kuomintang in particular should have been a sterling example to Umno.

The parallels between the two parties are startling: both parties led their respective countries to nationhood. Both parties oversaw tremendous economic growth, but at the cost of spiralling corruption and autocratic leadership.

Finally, like Umno, the Kuomintang lost power in an election, but their defeat was as complete as Umno's should have been. In the 2000 presidential elections, nearly 50 years of Nationalist rule over Taiwan was broken and the party suffered the additional indignity of being routed in the 2001 Legislative Yuan polls.

The Nationalists, however, were able to look themselves in the mirror and do what needed to be done. The party took steps to dismantle the business empire it had acquired through decades of patronage.
The regrouped Nationalists broke many policy taboos that would have been unthinkable under Chiang Kai-Shek. They toned down their pro-reunification rhetoric with the mainland.

More importantly, the Kuomintang allowed the rise of young leaders like Ma-Ying Jeou, who subsequently led the party back to victory by retaking the presidency.

Umno, however, merely deals with the superficial. The substantive – namely, whether or not the party should pursue a more multi-racial future – is ignored, although several leaders like Razali Ibrahim and Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin have tried to get it on the agenda.

Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah has also surprised many by calling for Umno to become a “supra-ethnic, national party” that deals in a just manner with all Malaysians regardless of race, while still defending its “traditional vision”.

These leaders recognise that Umno has to make a strategic push either to the right, embracing a more Malay nationalist and Islamicist ethos, or to the left, to garner votes from the multi-racial “Middle Malaysia”.

To my mind a push to the right will be disastrous. Umno can never hope to defeat PAS on its territory. Moreover, in pursuing the nationalist and Islamicist vote, Umno would destroy its chances with the larger vote banks in “Middle Malaysia”.

Sadly, while Malaysia has changed, the party of Merdeka is still locked in a time warp, regurgitating screeds about Malay rights and power. What the party leaders don't seem to want to acknowledge is that their monopoly on the Malay vote is gone forever.

Essentially the community has become too diverse to be represented by one political party, and this is where the PKR and PAS have reaped the electoral harvest.

The burden of history and its own failings are preventing Umno from regaining the Malay, much less “Middle Malaysia”, vote – the world that slipped from its grasp on March 8.

Umno and its leadership are just not seeing the value of adopting a broader, non-communal approach.

The party is seemingly trapped in the stranglehold of arrogance and rent-seeking that cost it so many votes.

In light of this, one wonders if a defeat on the scale that the Kuomintang suffered will be the only thing that can truly shake up Umno.

Is it possible that the strong medicine the party needs to save itself is a good four or five years in the Opposition benches?

My little comment:
What do we expect when Rafidah said something like I have been MP for 28 years and I know all the answers to all the questions, so let others ask the questions? Isn't she redundant already?