The Umno, according political writer Karim Raslan, has not learned anything from its debacle in the March 2008 elections. He said that while speaking at the race relations forum 'Impact of General Elections' at the 2nd Annual malaysian Student Leaders Summit on Sunday 3rh August.

Updating 

"The focus now is internatl, it is party polls and that has been a big distraction for them rather than dealing with issues, which is how the party and the Barisan National (BN) should be dealing with the coutry at large," he said.

The writer said Umno was now focused too much on its own internal problems and is not looking at the broader community of all Malaysians and is therefore in danger of not learning from the March 8 elections.

Money politics, he said, is a very major problem for the party, adding that "you have very high profile party polls and it is very obvious that money is playing an important role, and this is making people very uncomfortable,"

He said Malaysians were grappling with high oil prices, high inflation and struggling to keep their jobs while there is so much money circulating in certain parts of the country.

This situation he insisted, has disgusted the public and made Umno more disconnected from the people. He refered to the big houses built by Umno division heads in rural areas and the palatial mansion built by others in the midst of relatively modest neighborhood. This is not a question of race but about lack of accountability and transparency he said.

He accused the Umno of using race as a platform to protect their individual rights (that of the Umno leaders) when he spoke to reporters.

He also lambasted Umno leaders who say they defend Malay rights but what they are sying is they are protecting 'their' rights.  This he added has caused animosity but has been totally ignored by the Umno.

Raslan said Umno has to change tactics, hook up to the public at large rather than to the Malays alone. "If they did not learn their lessons from March 8, then there is a bigger tsunami waiting for them in the next elections,' he said.

While saying that Umno cannot run away from the fact that it is a race based party, it had to think about the interest of other BN components too and work with them more closely.

He told the press that he believed the Pakatan Raykat (PR) of Anwar Ibrahim is doing a better job and is putting much pressure on the BN to change and improve. He also said it was important to have the PR and to remain as such so that the Malaysians will have a choice of two competing political coalitions. 

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment