As September draws near, the heat of Umno elections is being felt more and more, especially with the start of the delegates meetings for 191 divisions yesterday until July 22.

These divisional meetings have become most important because in the conditional democratic system which was introduced in 1987, a pre-requisite to contest as a candidate for top party posts is not two nominations like before, but five percent of nominations [10 nominations] for a Supreme Council post, 10 percent [20 nominations] for vice-president, 20 percent [39 nominations] for deputy president, and 30 percent [58 nominations] for the post of president.

On top of that, the SC had agreed that the posts of president and deputy president are not to be contested and acting Umno president Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has "advised" that no camps, which can be divisive, be set up.

Eventhough the Umno Constitution allows contests for every top post in the party, including the posts of president and deputy president - as is the normal democratic practice - the SC, under the patronage of the Abdullah-Najib combination, bowed to the wishes of its feudal heads who loathe being challenged.

Thus was born the patronage politics of Umno, led by its top patron, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. And in descending order, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak bows to Abdullah, the whole SC bows to the Abdullah-Najib combination, and the entire party bows to the SC, with the relationships being the patron - patronised sort.

The positions of the top patron - Abdullah - and the Abdullah-Najib combination have been strengthened by the landslide victory in the last general election, and Abdullah's leadership style, which tries to project a fresh image and inject new vigour into a corrupt and haughty Umno, while helping to improve the integrity of his administration.

In this situation, if the Abdullah-Najib combination remains clear of any major contradictions which can jeopardise their good relationship, that combination will buttress the position of its patron, Abdullah.

The prince's foray

Unless the patron-patronised paradigm of Umno undergoes changes, anyone who dares to act against the wishes of Umno's patron will suffer the same fate as the Kelantan prince Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who is popularly known as Ku Li.

In 1987, he challenged Dr Mahathir Mohamad for the post of Umno president and lost. He was forced to form the Semangat 46 party to further his political career. After that failed, he dissolved that party and returned to Umno's folds. However, it is difficult for politicians like Ku Li to be satisfied with being a "patronised" person in the party. If there's any chance, he will certainly try his luck again.

Even though in politics, nothing is strange, in the political realities of Umno, it looks like "the banana plant does not fruit twice" for Ku Li. In the Umno elections of 2000, he did not offer himself to be a candidate for the posts of SC, vice-president, deputy president or president because was not confident of the number of nominations he could garner.

In the end, he failed to secure enough nominations for all the top Umno posts. This meant that he did not qualify to contest for any top post in the party, and was only appointed as an SC member.

This time, at a press conference in Kota Bharu last Thursday, Ku Li urged that the nominations quota system be scrapped. He also announced his readiness to be nominated for any top post which the divisions felt was suitable for him.

If this time, Ku Li and his camp are still not brave enough or consider that it is not smart to take the initiative to lobby or join forces with other groups to secure enough nominations, his luck will not be much changed from what transpired in 2000.

If a politician as "veteran" and ambitious as Ku Li cannot do much about the contraints and restrictions of the nominations quota system, who else can do anything about that?

The notion that Ku Li is a "yesterday's politician" may be disputed, but it cannot be denied that he is past the peak of his political achievements. Even so, he is not a politician who will be satisfied with being one of the patronised.

To achieve the patron status which he has sought all along, he will have to lobby hard to secure the nominations from 39 divisions in order to qualify to contest the deputy presidency, and nominations from 58 divisions to contest the presidency.

Slim chances

If the Abdullah-Najib combination does not break, and is not broken, then even if Ku Li manages to secure enough nominations to contest the deputy presidency, his hopes of winning are still most slim as his influence in Umno continues to dwindle while the position of Abdullah-Najib, which has been strengthened by the victory in the last general election, is riding on a surging wave.

I also doubt that without the support of a patron any candidate for the vice-presidency will be picked. In the 2000 Umno elections, for instance, nine candidates [Najib, Abdul Ghani Othman, Abu Hassan Omar, Osu Sukam, Syed Hamid Albar, Muhyiddin Yassin, Isa Abdul Samad and Dr Rais Yatim] contested.

The winners were Najib, Muhd Taib and Muhyiddin - all three were nominated by the Kubang Pasu division, which was the division of Mahathir, the patron of Umno at that time.

This time, those offering themselves to be candidates for the post of vice-president are Muhd Taib, Muhyiddin, Syed Hamid, Mustapa Mohamed, Isa Samad, Wira Mohd Ali Rustam, Zaid Ibrahim and Shahrir Samad.

According to the logic of patronage politics, those who are nominated by Kepala Batas division will have the best chances of being picked because divisions which are patronised will bow to the wishes of the patron.

In this scenerio, politicians as mature as Ku Li surely will not move hastily and end up ensnaring and shaming himself. He issued his statement only to voice his protest, and to remind the patron of Umno that he still exists, and nothing more than that in all likelihood!

The above is a translation of an article written in Bahasa Malaysia and published in malaysiakini on Wednesday.