COMMENT The contrast between the two winding-up speeches could not have been starker.

Disdaining malice or frivolity, PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim’s wrap-up remarks to the party’s annual congress in Johor Baru last week was a neat demonstration of the orator’s art.

By contrast, Umno president Najib Razak’s summing-up to his party’s annual conclave yesterday had what Shakespeare said in Macbeth about some of life’s dramas: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Both winding-up speeches were supposed to shift the party’s delegates into battle mode for an imminent general election, surely a pivotal moment in the country’s search for fresh directions in the face of political and economic sclerosis...