The die is cast. Umno supreme council members have decided that grassroots supporters will uphold party 'traditions' - that the present acting president and deputy president would not be challenged and be anointed in office.

This coming September's Umno polls will be a very tame affair as the Wanita and Pemuda chiefs' posts would probably be retained by the incumbents since there is no one willing to offer themselves as challengers.

The most we can expect is the battle royale for the vice-president posts as well as for the supreme councils seats where candidates eyeing for these positions are often involved in horse trading and silently promote themselves among the delegates.

We can only watch on the sidelines as to who will win the vice-president posts and the supreme councils seats. Let us hope and pray that the delegates will make the right choice and chose the young and the bold with a clean record to replace the old and tainted incumbents.

A major spring-cleaning is needed and our prime minister needs a good mandate from the Umno delegates to remove the former premier's old horses who are involved in corrupt practices.

The prime minister seems to be the only one who talks about a clean and a corrupt-free government and private sector while the rest of the cabinet seems oblivious to the issue.

If Umno can clean up its act and change its second-rung leaders, the other Barisan Nasional component parties - which are also helmed by old horses from the previous regime - will follow suit.

Barisan National parties can take a leaf from the American political system where the president serves only for two terms and cannot be elected for office after the second term, no matter how popular he is with the public at large. By having this system, a leader gets to implement his visions and ideas within a certain period before he retires from office and is replaced with someone with a newer vision.

Surely we don't want a situation like before where a leader can remain in office for 22 years not because the public loves him but through his own Machiavellian methods. He remained in office because his ministers and Umno bigwigs dared not go against him.

They were afraid that what had happened to the lonely prisoner in Sungai Buloh would also befall them.

Umno needs to reform or it will suffer the fate of other parties in other countries where voters voted to change government.