I cannot understand why political commentator Neil Khor would buy into Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin’s contemptuously populist and self-serving comments especially pertaining to his own party.

In this case, Khor agrees with Khairy that Umno could or is becoming a ‘fringe’ party in contemporary Malaysian politics. And this is being borne out, according to Khor, by the ‘Allah’ issue and the subsequent attacks on churches and a Sikh temple recently.

 

But all the evidence suggests the opposite to be true.

 

I have not seen Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR make any substantive inroads to wresting power from Umno, let alone from greatly undermining Umno, since the March 2008 polls.

 

In fact, all the evidence points starkly to PKR losing its luster amongst voters. One suspects this to be the case even amongst some of its own supporters.

 

NONE Ask the ousted Perak Menteri Besar Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, who yesterday told Malaysiakini that Malay support for PKR in Perak has eroded by up to 8 percent.

 

That’s the kind of voting swing that would give the corrupt, incompetent and racist Umno great heart, if not comfort.

 

And don’t forget: We still do not know how Khairy has amassed wealth so quickly upon entering politics at his age and during the tenure of his totally incompetent father-in-law, former premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

 

But we do know for a fact that political connections within Umno and the pathetically pusillanimous BN do breed and have bred sudden and great wealth amongst its elite.

 

Do not underestimate the nefarious cronyistic and nepotistic relationships with the power elite. Umno and BN are a craven for national banditry and deceit, given its history of paranoia and kleptomania.

 

The markers of this consortium of the power elite and the ruling class in Malaysia are borne by the class struggle within Umno and elsewhere and which were embedded before 1969, during the New Economic Policy and during the despicable tyrant Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s tenure as prime minister and his so-called privatisation policies.

 

Khor writes: “The fears of the Umno Youth leader are now reality. In the minds of most Malaysians, Umno is extremist, backward-looking and unsophisticated. In short, the party now occupies the fringe position that PAS once did, definitely not in the mainstream of society.”

 

No problem with the first sentence. Umno is all of that - and more. It’s run by unblinking ideologues who believe in their own abominable dribble. They dream it up by the minute. Just as former US president George W Bush and his troopers had for their equally detestable far-right neo-conservativism.

 

The cornerstone of both Bush’s and Umno’s (and BN’s) political posturing and ideology is the supremacy of their respective races and religions.

 

This kind of dogma is brainless, vulgar and awfully dangerous.

No longer mainstream?

But why buy a used car from the spin merchant Khairy? Would you believe anything that Jamaluddin, the Umno’s youth wing leader, says? Is he a genuine Umno maverick who states what he truly believes? Or is he merely playing politics to suit his own political agenda?

 

umno 2007 pemuda keris 061107 kissing Don’t forget that Khairy had also stood behind Hishammuddin Hussein’s lofted Malay dagger and propped and sloganised the supremacy of Ketuanan Melayu during a recent Umno general assembly.

 

No problem with much else that Khor writes but his second sentence in the said paragraph is grossly over-exaggerated.

 

Umno is no longer part of mainstream society?

Yes, PAS has held the state of Kelantan and has had made significant inroads to power in other Malay-dominant states to ward off Umno’s centrality.

 

But that does not mean Umno can’t and won’t win back marginal votes in these states. After all, Umno has a massive war chest of funds to be used by whatever means to win power.

 

Look at the way money politics works in Umno. And whilst you’re doing that, the same happens in the rest of BN, especially within MCA and MIC.

 

PKR and PAS simply do not have Umno’s financial clout. That does not mean that PAS was then or is now a ‘fringe’ political party.

 

One thing Umno is good at doing is extorting and distorting loyalty and compliance. Money is the core of Umno’s power. Umno’s legitimacy does not stem from its protection of Islam as the dominant religion.

 

PKR could easily become a fringe party, given its own shenanigans in Perak, Kedah and Selangor. Who’ll wager that Kedah won’t be wrested from PAS-PKR by Umno before the next general election?

 

Even on the Allah issue, which I consider to be patently misleading for its outright bigotry and nothing more, PKR, strangely, has not made a meal of it despite Umno’s contradictory comments. Yet these have now come to pass as “national policy”.

 

But wait for it: It’s national policy in non-sultanate states and territories where the word Allah can be used by all races. But it’s barred everywhere else. That’s how dumb the Umno-led regime is, and its leadership.

 

When Umno’s ‘leaders’ - such as Khairy, Rais Yatim, Nazri Aziz, Hishammuddin Hussein and Muhyiddin Yassin - act on the one hand as Prime Minister Najib Razak’s chief head-kickers, and on the other hand in their own selfish political or narrow interests, Malaysian politics gives new meaning to George Bush’s version of dumb and dumber.

 

And yet PKR, including its coalition partners, has sat on its hands throughout this stunning episode in racist politics.

 

MANJIT BHATIA, an academician and writer, is also research director of AsiaRisk, a political, economic and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. He specialises in international economics and politics, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific.