{"id":35381,"date":"2012-02-07T06:39:35","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T22:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/?p=35381"},"modified":"2012-02-07T06:39:35","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T22:39:35","slug":"umnos-right-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/umnos-right-turn\/","title":{"rendered":"UMNO\u2019s right turn"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Liew Chin Tong<\/strong><\/p>\n

For reference, see the first part of this article here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As I walked from my hotel room to a meeting in Port Dickson in July 2005, I remember holding a newspaper with a photo of Hishammuddin Hussein brandishing a keris <\/em>on its cover. At that moment, I knew UMNO was kissing goodbye to its non-Malay support.<\/p>\n

Indeed, in hindsight, it was the pivotal moment of the decade: UMNO had turned to the right permanently while the then-Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi lost control over his reform agenda. The demise of Abdullah’s premiership, arguably UMNO’s last chance to reform, began in July 2005.<\/p>\n

Today, unless Prime Minister Najib Razak can stare down the right wing of his party as effectively as Dr. Mahathir Mohamad\u2019s Vision 2020 grand compromise and turn the clock back by seven years to restore its centrist credential, the events of July 2005 will culminate in UMNO and Barisan Nasional\u2019s eventual electoral collapse.<\/p>\n

As a reminder to Najib, his great leader Mahathir painfully discovered in the 1990 general election that the 1970s assumption that UMNO could win 70 percent of Malay support was no longer tenable. Malays in general have received better education and exposure, hence they have become more politically sophisticated.<\/p>\n

The high rate of urbanisation among the Malays also pulls the rug from under the feet of UMNO, the rural machinery party par excellent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

UMNO\u2019s Malay base has been further eroded by the ever-ready availability of popular alternative Malay leadership in the forms of a revived PAS and Semangat 46 in the 1990s and Anwar Ibrahim since his sacking in 1998.<\/p>\n

It was the non-Malay middle class which Mahathir won over through his Vision 2020 grand compromise that sustained UMNO and BN in power from February 1991 to July 2005.<\/p>\n

But why was UMNO so foolishly turning right at its general assembly in July 2005?<\/p>\n

The reasons why<\/strong><\/p>\n

After having been in power for 21 months since 31 October 2003, the novelty factor of the Abdullah premiership waned and his leadership weaknesses became too glaring.<\/p>\n

Abdullah\u2019s all-talk-no-show attributes didn\u2019t help. Making it worse, from the point of view of the UMNO-putra rentiers, were the subjects he chose to talk about.<\/p>\n

Abdullah fired his first policy salvo in the \u201cFirst-world Infrastructure, Third-world Mentality\u201d speech at the Oxbridge Society in March 2003 when he was acting Prime Minister during Mahathir\u2019s two-month absence, foreshadowing his key priorities, among others, doing away with the government-driven construction craze, paring down fiscal deficits, and the anti-corruption drive.<\/p>\n

As Prime Minister, Abdullah cancelled several of Mahathir\u2019s pet projects and put most spending commitments under review. The gravy train for many suddenly stopped. It doesn\u2019t help that some of the projects were allegedly revived with the intervention of \u201cthe Fourth Floor boys\u201d \u2013 the office of Abdullah\u2019s young advisors in Putrajaya.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest thing I\u2019ve had to do as Prime Minister so far is to reduce the budget deficit,\u201d he said at the first anniversary of his premiership.<\/p>\n

Abdullah told the audience at the Harvard Club on 5 May 2005 that \u201cthe economy has been used for government pump-priming since 1998 and so the decision to reduce the budget deficit was, for many, like taking away a comforting source of income\u201d.<\/p>\n

He was aware that, for the rentier class, there was a \u201cgeneral feeling that things are not moving as fast as they were before\u201d while those who wanted to see genuine reform were \u201cgrowing impatient to see various things happen\u201d.<\/p>\n

Abdullah asked for patience. \u201cI am committed to seeing through my policies, strategies and promises to fruition. I am not only a man of intentions, I am also a man of deeds. I am not one for display or fanfare or harsh words, so perhaps I don\u2019t give away many signs, but that is an issue of style, not substance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mahathir\u2019s attacks<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of those who lost their patience with Abdullah was Mahathir. Rumours of Mahathir airing his frustration privately were quite widespread from the second half of 2004, especially after the release of Anwar Ibrahim on 2 September 2004.<\/p>\n

But Mahathir only launched his public attack on the Abdullah administration in late May 2005 by training his gun on his fomer loyalist Rafidah Aziz over the issue of approved permits (AP) for imported cars. The issue dominated the public domain for months.<\/p>\n

Mahathir became the focal point of dissent among UMNO rentiers while Abdullah\u2019s reformist credential was tainted, finding himself between a rock and a hard place. Mahathir crossed the line to attack Abdullah personally a year later.<\/p>\n

At the same time, there was a lot of hype surrounding the Ninth Malaysian Plan, which would be released in the following year. Abdullah was more or less postponing all decisions in the name of the plan. The rentier class was eager to have a slice of the pie and thus was eager to use the UMNO general assembly to make a point.<\/p>\n

Abdullah\u2019s presidential speech on Thursday 21 July 2005 continued his line of thought since 2003 that \u201cthe Government cannot play the role of Santa Claus, perpetually handing out gifts. Contractors should have taken this as a signal to diversify to other sectors\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to Abdullah, \u201cin 1992, there were only 2,049 Bumiputera contractors. By 2005, the figure had reached 46,000 \u2013 an increase exceeding 2,000 (two thousand) per cent in 13 years. Of these, more than 42,000 were registered as Class F contractors.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost all these contractors expected government contracts. There are 63,000 contractors of all classes in a nation of 25 million. This equals to one contractor for every 350 Malaysians. In comparison, Japan, whose contractors participate successfully in international tenders, has a ratio of only one contractor to 10,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was too late. No one in UMNO was interested in Abdullah\u2019s edicts and those outside the party had lost faith in Abdullah\u2019s reform agenda.<\/p>\n

Hishammuddin and his keris<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A day earlier at the UMNO Youth assembly, Hishammuddin Hussein unwittingly stole the limelight with his keris<\/em>. Being an English-educated elitist, Hisham is always under pressure to show off his Malay credentials. And being called pondan<\/em> (sissy) by his PAS counterpart probably drove him to use the language of threats and violence.<\/p>\n

Hisham\u2019s brandishing of the keris <\/em>was packaged with a \u201cMalay agenda\u201d and the call to revive the New Economic Policy (1970-1990), which Mahathir toned down with the National Development Policy (1991-2000) and the National Vision Policy (2001 onwards).<\/p>\n

By then Abdullah\u2019s voice had all but disappeared. Everyone at the July 2005 UMNO general assembly sang the racial tune as if it was in UMNO\u2019s glory days of the 1970s. It was a downhill spiral for Abdullah, his agenda and his grip over the party.<\/p>\n

Looking back, the private meeting in Port Dickson which I attended turned out to be an important one which I will write about it in the final instalment of this article next week. \u2013The Rocket<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Liew Chin Tong For reference, see the first part of this article here. As I walked from my hotel room to a meeting in Port Dickson in July 2005, I remember holding a newspaper with a photo of Hishammuddin Hussein brandishing a keris on its cover. At that moment, I knew UMNO was kissing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[233,333,294,224],"class_list":{"0":"post-35381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-bn","9":"tag-liew-chin-tong","10":"tag-mp","11":"tag-umno"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}