AT first glance, Bersatu’s first annual general assembly as a ruling party looks just like its nemesis’, Umno. After all, Bersatu was built by former Umno members. But appearances can be deceiving.

Bersatu’s delegates wear the same red baju melayu as those in Umno. They hold it in a cavernous convention centre in a major city.

Songkok-wearing men crowd the open-air spaces blowing clouds of cigarette smoke, while ladies in glittering baju kurung tour the stalls selling batik and Malay health products. Salesmen around the main doors hawk scarves emblazoned with Bersatu’s bunga raya logo.

A vice-president makes a rousing speech urging the party to give out contracts and jobs to the grassroots because that is the way to build Bersatu’s popularity and strength.

But the similarities end there. Even on a superficial level, the differences between Bersatu and Umno are apparent to veteran political observers and journalists who have covered both these parties.

The differences are important for the average tax-paying Malaysian, as it will determine whether Bersatu lives up to its to promise of not becoming a political party that abuses public funds to keep itself in power.

“If this were Umno, you’d have way more stalls and way more people hanging about everywhere to make it look meriah (festive),” said Mohamad Faizul Mohamad Ismail a delegate from Teluk Intan, Perak.

“But we have to come here on our own money. No one sponsors us, not the party, or some businessman,” said Faizul.

Zaidi Ishak, who sells Bersatu shirts at the bazaar, said sales at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) are nothing compared with what he would have made at Umno’s AGM at the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) because of the latter’s large crowds.

But the thing with Umno’s crowds, said Zaidi and Faizul, is that they are bussed in and billeted by the party’s sponsors – businessmen who grew rich from the government contracts given out by Umno ministers.

“For each group of five delegates, the party booked one room with two beds. We had to share the cost of the rooms and squeeze inside,” said Faizul, of the basic accommodation for Bersatu’s delegates.

Many of the booths which filled the corridors of PWTC during Umno’s AGM were also of government departments. These were conspicuously missing from Bersatu’s AGM which only had entrepreneurs and private businesses, such as an insurance agency and an umrah travel service.

“We wanted our members to draw the line between the party and the government,” said supreme council member Ulya Aqamah Husmaudin.

Purging the old culture

The differences extend to the speeches by Bersatu’s delegates, who are free to speak their minds.

“It’s a Malay party, but the delegates focused their speeches on how to uplift their community and their problems. No one bashes the other races,” said political scientist Prof James Chin who visited the AGM yesterday.

“It’s unlike Umno where the Malay supremacy and the rhetoric is so in your face that its uncomfortable to listen as a non-Malay,” said Chin of the University of Tasmania.

Even Bersatu supreme council member Dr Rais Yatim bemoaned this aspect about the speeches.

“Only one delegate touched on something related to the Malay identity, the Malay language. The rest talked about party policies and the performance of our ministers. And this is supposed to be a Malay party.”

But the old Umno culture is hard to erase. Many delegates demanded that Bersatu leaders use their positions as ministers to aid the party.

Bersatu vice-president Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman gave legitimacy to this demand when he said grassroots leaders at the division and branch level should be given contracts to help them run the party. Half of the hall erupted in cheers.

In Umno, such a demand would have been considered normal, said Ulya Aqamah, who is Bersatu’s Youth information chief.

But this is where Bersatu differentiates itself from Umno. Right after the closing speeches of the AGM, the party’s youth wing Armada, called for a press conference to state in no uncertain terms that they rejected Rashid’s demand.

Ulya, who was at the press conference, said Armada would even report the party’s own members who gained government contracts through unlawful means.

Such a spectacle, of the youth wing publicly denouncing a senior leader’s policy speech, would have been tantamount to treason in Umno. But this is Bersatu, where freedom of speech and dissent is sacred.

Ulya admits that the old patronage culture will not be purged just by one press conference, but the party must do it if it hopes to survive and thrive.

After all, voters gave Bersatu and the Pakatan Harapan coalition the keys to Putrajaya because it promised that it will not be “another Umno”.

“People voted us because they want an end to this political culture. The party cannot tolerate this if it wants to survive and win the next elections.” – December 31, 2018.