I feel compelled to comment on the ridiculous display of demagoguery on an annual basis by one of the largest political parties in the world.

Malaysians agonize about the future of this country when Umno holds its annual general assembly, and with it comes the relentless ethnic and religious harangue, which if uttered under any other circumstance by any other person would be prima facie seditious.

It is astounding that in this day and age, an entire week of proceedings by the ruling party in government be fixated on the frail issues of ethnicity and religion. If the momentum of issues currently plaguing our nation are kept undiminished come 2008, the citizenry would hopefully herald a new era of governance.

The Umno Youth leader is reported to have warned partners in the BN against playing racial politics and stated that they have no place in the BN. Probably Hishammuddin Hussein Onn failed to note that his erudite deputy was the originator of intra-BN racism some months ago and he definitely could not have claimed ignorance to the racist diatribes by his youth delegates, notably the Selangor, Penang, Terengganu and Kelantan representatives at the just concluded Umno Youth assembly.

Not that we should be surprised at these events as half-a-century of being ruled by BN has exposed the BN structure for what it is; ethnocentric (read: racist) with Umno as the base, ipso facto. Umno should let it be known that the coalition of 14 BN partners is a farce and that nation-building only and always entails only one obvious viewpoint. Whereas the rest of the world have moved on to idea and value-based politics, we remain steadfast in our tribalism.

It is worth noting that the social contract Umno fervently reminds us about is not the original Merdeka Constitution which came into effect on Aug 27, 1957. What we presently have is a Constitution amended 42 times over the last 48 years (as of 2005), to quote Prof Shad Saleem Faruqi, who also estimates the number of individual amendments to be around 650.

I do not intend to even start on what the Reid Commission recommended with regard to ethnic privileges; suffice to say that the NEP had as its stated goals 'the eradication of poverty irrespective of race' and to 'eliminate the identification of ethnicity with economic function'.

Looking at the annual turn of events at the Umno general assembly it is imperative for Umno delegates to hold their leaders to account for promises they have made (and continue to make) all these years. Talk is cheap. The leaders themselves admitted that targets set for their community have not been achieved. As Nikita Khrushchev said '... politicians are people who promise to build a bridge where there is no river'.

Interestingly, Umno Youth and Puteri Umno are now setting their sights on a 70% and 60% equity stake respectively for the Malays. It is, therefore, high time the delegates set key performance indicators to gauge the delivery of their leaders. On every measure of progress, the Malays appear to be lacking a report of current achievement which should rightly be tabled annually at the assembly.

Other BN component parties should adopt the same. For instance, MIC has to account for the achievement of the 3% equity stake the government has set aside for Indians. For the rest of us citizens, we shall look forward to 2008.