Change is ubiquitous. No country remains backward. No society remains traditional. Influences for social changes come from within the nation and with an increasingly capitalist, globalised and digital world, the spread, the intensity and disruptive nature of the future of our nation would become inevitable.
Old values, culture and behaviour may survive but often the rational, pragmatic and progressive elements of life will be embedded within our heritage and a new tradition of modernity will widen their influences on our life.
So too our political values and behaviours. No political party that is recognised as a freedom fighter, that has helped gain independence and developed the nation, would be able to rule the country forever.
Thus, India’s Congress Party, Taiwan’s Kuomintang Party, Japan’s Liberal Democrat Party, Indonesia’s Golkar and the latest, Malaysia’s Umno, are among the political parties that are losing influence. Voters are dumping them.
Often the failures of these political parties lie in their inability to understand and analyse the impacts of their own success stories.
Umno began as a Malay and rural-based political party. Following independence, it governed an emerging commercial and industrial multi-ethnic nation and delivered development benefits through the New Economic Policy. But times have changed, and now problems are surfacing for the party.
Since the 1970’s, the country has undergone social changes – from being a subsistence agrarian society to a commercial, industrial, middle class and cosmopolitan society in the 1990’s. These social changes have transformed the diverse Malaysian society.
Members of Generation Y, and urban and middle classes spurred by migration, globalisation and the digital world have embraced a culture of modernity. They believe in democratic values of freedom of speech and access to information.
They demand the right to assemble; they demand good governance of the nation, that it be based on social justice, inclusivity and integrity, and free of corruption, nepotism, cronyism and abuse of power.
However, a study on the Umno leadership in 2000 shows that the party has cast off its Malay and rural valued-based political struggle and replaced it with an urban corporate Malay culture.
The agrarian rural voters remained loyal to Umno but the Malay voters among the middle class, urban and Gen-Y have drifted away from Umno as they hold to new values and aspirations of good governance.
Umno lost its political legitimacy among the Chinese voters since 2000, Indians in 2013 and the Malays in 2018 as the party still played the ethnic card, and failed to check growing practices of corruption, nepotism and cronyism.
It economic policy belittles the growing social inequality with ethnic groups, and the situation is compounded by intra-Malay and Indian groups’ social inequality. The redirection of public policies in the 11th Malaysia Plan towards welfare and need-based to handle the rising cost of goods and living among the B40 came too late to be converted in voting BN and Umno.
The May 9 general election dethroned BN and Umno replacing them with PH.
The rots in BN, especially Umno, are clearly observed as waves of Umno parliamentarians, state assemblymen, division leaders and the grassroots start leaving Umno to become Independents with the hope of joining Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu).
Clearly, Umno as an organisation is paralysed as losing power means access to the national coffer, public projects and government machinery is limited. Its political funds are also frozen following court cases on 1MDB and its leaders slapped with CBT charges.
Its political ideology as being Malay-Islamic centric is no longer in line with the political and the changing civilisational values of a contemporary Malaysia. Heritage and new traditions must be embraced in managing and governing rather than the glorifying of the past and the ethnic primordialism of the Malay world.
The new political ideology must be the recognition and acceptance of indigeneity as part of the civilisational canopy with greater civic values to be embedded in this ethno-nation with social justice and inclusivity as the trust of governance and development of the nation.
The new Umno leadership still faces the problem of acceptance by the Malays as those who won in the recent party convention are considered tainted with corruption and abuse of power.
Waves of dissatisfied Umno leaders have left the party. This has affected the bonds between the Umno leadership and the micro-solidarities in the villages and towns, its branches and divisions at the state level.
Umno is split into various factions, from wanting to be loyal to Umno, to leaving the party to be independents, or joining Bersatu and PKR. Lately, Amanah and PAS are hoping for the political frogs to join them too.
So, what now for Umno?
Malays in the subsistence farming sector and the depressed rural areas, especially in the Peninsula, have forsaken Umno.
If Umno wants to make a comeback as a national political player, strengthening its organisational capacity, reinventing its political ideology and re-strengthening the grassroots with its leaders must be its critical agenda.
The habit of defining scholars and researchers as anti-Umno and blacklisting them is the price Umno is paying which might eventually lead to its eventual destruction.
The same advice is given to the present federal government which is not free of political assassinations of its critics.
Without scholars and researchers to study and analyse a political party’s performance and acceptance by the society, the political future of that party is numbered.
• Prof Dr Mansor Mohd Noor is the Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
