THERE are plenty of good things to say about the Umno deputy president Mohamad Hasan’s opening speech at the party’s general assembly.

He admitted that money politics is destroying Umno, warning it would consume the party if it went unchecked.

He pleaded with the party to return to the path of moderation on which the Barisan Nasional consociational model was founded upon.

While Umno is notorious for dabbling in racial and religious rhetoric for political expediency, the party still believes that Malaysia can only prosper through power-sharing among all races.

And as Umno-BN is now only a junior partner in a multiracial coalition, it would be counterproductive to continue a line of divisive politics.

To many, Mohamad has always been a doer. He is widely perceived to be a safer pair of hands compared to his president.

This is not because he does not belong to the cluster of members who have been or are being tried for corrption; he is also valued because he belongs to the successful corporate class and could instil efficiency and industry in Umno. 

However, he is greatly mistaken if he thinks the president remains crucial to the process of reforming Umno and that the top party leadership will emerge unscathed from Umno’s worst-ever electoral defeat.

Indeed, Mohamad asked that the positions of the party president and others not be contested in the party polls as the competition would only cause further division and damage the already weakened party. 

The corporate world is less forgiving to non-performers and Mohamad may have been in politics too long to remember what makes the sector tick and stay competitive.

From the way the general assembly has panned out, it appears the party is only interested in talking among themselves and drawing the wrong lessons from the general election. 

Any political party in a democracy would have shown its leader the door after suffering a record defeat in the polls. That’s if the leader hasn’t resigned.

Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s head should have been the first to roll when Umno was relegated to the opposition bench. Yet Zahid had also played a part in breaking the impasse of a hung parliament.

The coalition government would not have been possible if animosity did not exist between Zahid and Perikatan Nasional. And then there was his good relationship with Anwar Ibrahim. 

However, Umno should be smart enough to not tie its fate to the coalition government. This was perhaps what Mohamad was concerned about when he warned that unseating Zahid could mean mean an end to the coalition government experiment and give the keys back to PN. 

Nevertheless, Umno must at least hold its leader accountable if it hopes to ever win another election.

It is clear now that Umno’s humiliating loss in the recent general election was a referendum against Zahid.

The 2018 election results should have made Umno realise that Malaysians will not hesitate to vote out corruption. Yet, the party’s electoral strategy in 2022 was led by an unpopular leader facing a raft of corruption charges.

Zahid might argue that staying in government could help Umno reverse its fortunes, but Umno had suffered two crashing general election defeats while it was in government.

The question has never been whether the party needs to stay in government to have a fighting chance. Rather, it has been about the fact that its leaders have been constantly put the party on the rack by refusing to step aside.

Umno could lose again in the coming state elections and the next general election if the status quo stays. 

Umno saw too late that Najib Razak was a liability going into the 2018 general election and the same is happening with Zahid.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.

Umno must be insane to think the best leader it can offer is Zahid. – January 15, 2023.

* Kenneth Cheng has always been interested in the interplay between human rights and government but more importantly he is a father of two cats, Tangyuan and Toufu. When he is not attending to his feline matters, he is most likely reading books about politics and human rights or playing video games. He is a firm believer in the dictum “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.