AN UMNO-watcher observed: “In the early days of UMNO, it would be difficult to find a millionaire among UMNO division leaders. After over six decades of Independence, it would be difficult to find an UMNO division leader who is not a millionaire.”
Fifth UMNO president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad believed that UMNO is beyond redemption. He said UMNO is totally corrupt and the conviction and sentence of Datuk Seri Najib Razak for embezzling public funds in the mega 1MDB scandal isn’t likely to cleanse the party.
Is the fifth UMNO President right that UMNO is beyond saving and that the only way to end the corruption perpetrated by UMNO leaders is to kill UMNO off entirely?
The 15th General Election (GE15) will decide whether UMNO can cease to be a party of kleptocrats and whether Malaysia will continue in the trajectory of a kleptocracy.
Up to now, neither UMNO nor any major UMNO leader has ever condemned the 1MDB financial scandal or the string of mega scandals that plague the country.
UMNO has so changed in character that the first four UMNO presidents – Onn Jaafar, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein and Tun Hussein Onn – will not be able to recognise or endorse it if they are alive today.
In 1979, at the UMNO General Assembly, Hussein Onn warned that Malaysia will be destroyed if its leaders are “dishonest, untrustworthy and corrupt” and expressed the hope that the Bank Rakyat scandal would be a “bitter lesson to other government institutions and agencies including companies and subsidiaries set up by the Government”.
Hussein Onn was right and UMNO is being destroyed while destroying the nation by having “dishonest, untrustworthy and corrupt” leaders for 30 years and a RM50 bil 1MDB scandal!
Can UMNO be saved to ensure that Malaysia can be saved, or have we reached the tragic position that both UMNO and Malaysia cannot be saved?
I do not believe in the last proposition for the past two weeks testified to the truth of the saying that hope springs eternal in the human breast.
Very few expected the 14th General Election (GE14) to topple the UMNO-BN government and until the late afternoon of Polling Day on May 9, 2018, Najib was expecting not only a big win for UMNO-BN but to regain two-thirds parliamentary majority UNNO-BN lost in the 12th General Election in 2008.
But May 9, 2018 surprised everyone to the extent that even those who doubted that the UMNO-BN political hegemony could be ended have convinced themselves that they had expected the UMNO-BN government to be toppled that day.
Those who had dared to dream, hope and acted, like those from the world-wide Malaysian diaspora, whether in Singapore, London, New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, Sydney, Melbourne, Wellington, Auckland had not acted in vain to ensure that their single vote was counted or the 1MDB scandal and other scandals like the latest RM9 bil littoral combatant ships (LCS) scandal would remain buried.
We must thank the 5.6 million voters who voted for Pakatan Harapan in GE14 for exposing the 1MDB scandal and other mega scandals but we made the big mistake of not realising that what we did on May 9, 2018 was only the first step of a long struggle to make Malaysia a world-class great nation.
UMNO president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi previously argued that UMNO-BN would lose GE15 if it is not held within the next few months.
I say that UMNO-BN would lose GE15 if it is held within the next few months if UMNO cannot convince voters that it has changed and that it is no more a party of kleptocrats.
Zahid is right that there in only one cluster in charge in UMNO – the “court cluster” – whose sole interest is to free the corrupt leaders in UMNO from various corruption charges levelled against them, instead of freeing UMNO and the country from kleptocracy.
Zahid is only confirming that UMNO has drastically changed its character since its founding days and has deviated from the struggles and sacrifices of its founding fathers by becoming a party of kleptocrats. – Sept 7, 2022
Lim Kit Siang is Iskandar Puteri MP.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
Main pic credit: Getty Images
