PRU 12 Campaign

From a friend: Can UMNO win: Yes but at what cost?

Umno cannot win by being ‘Cekap, Bersih, dan Amanah’. The phrase ‘Cekap, Bersih dan Amanah’ is never used anymore because it elicits contempt and outrage in a Malaysia where the public feels lied to and cheated for the last 20 years.

In a civilised country, the party that wins does so by delivering the goods - better education and healthcare systems, transparent governance, open tenders, independent judiciary, competent prosecution teams, clean police, honest ministers, dependable anti-corruption agency, safe helicopters, etc.

Umno cannot win by delivering what the public wants.

The main reason is that the party cannot reform. Its leaders are either unwilling or unable to reform its patronage networks. It does not suit the leadership to reform the party political patronage system as it will upset the power equation and status quo within the party. Leaders at the top got there by climbing up via those same patronage networks. These elite network members expect to be paid in cold hard cash, business licenses, land, logging concessions, government contracts, and other goodies using state resources and taxpayers money.

As leader-patron you get to decide who gets what, and thereby ensure you get more votes than the other guy in any party elections, and so remain the leader. Why would you want to reform your meal ticket?

Without money politics, unity within the party will vaporise rapidly as voter loyalty naturally follow the highest bidder. Whoever can offer or pay the most gets to stay at the top of the party hierarchy. Whoever threatens to reduce corruption and reform the party political patronage network risks being voted out of power by his own party colleagues and lower party leaders.

Intra-party contests are strictly for more money and power, and has nothing to do with ideology. This has been the case since Dr Mahathir Mohamad took power over 20 years ago. The public has finally come to understand that Umno cannot reform because it is not in the interests of the leaders nor their elite patronage network supporters to reform.

If so, neither can the component parties in BN nor the government machinery reform. In fact, no reform is possible unless Umno reforms its party patronage system. The public perception is that our leadership and government has been rife with corruption, crony ism, nepotism for the last 20 years.

Immoral values, and corruption have a contagion effect. No one is going to stop being corrupt when they see their leaders and superiors getting obscenely rich with no ‘big fish’ getting caught. It is hardly surprising that every Malaysian aims to accumulate as much personal influence and wealth as is necessary to likewise become a ‘big fish’ that can never be prosecuted.

Rampant corruption is the characteristic hallmark of all doomed economies. The current system is morally debilitating, and the common people have problems deciding what is right or wrong anymore. The problem of corruption reached enormous proportions under Mahathir's reign, and we have seen no significant attempts at reform.

Under the present system, when common people report wrongdoings committed by their superiors and political elites, they themselves get hauled up under the OSA and ISA instead of the police and attorney-general examining the allegations in open court.

We must unite to make our leaders stamp out the ills of our society. We do not want to be another resource-rich basket-case like Sierra Leone and Burma nor a resource poor basket-case like the Philippines or Niger. When our oil runs out in 10 years time, what will we do then?

Government banditry where the elites prey on the common people and the poor must stop. Corruption impoverishes all of us - Malays, Chinese, Indians, Dayaks, Ibans, Eurasians. The extent to which our ruling elites will reject reform is the extent to which they will insist on using ethnic divisions to divide and rule. If they cannot offer ‘Cekap, Bersih dan Amanah’ then you can bet anything that they will play up ‘Ketuanan’ and apartheid.

This is the Malaysian dilemma; the refusal by our corrupt, over-privileged filthy rich elites to reform the patronage system and their insistence on dividing and ruling such that the ‘rakyat’ fight each other rather than work together to stamp out corruption whilst our crooked elites get even richer.