'Dan saya menyeru kepada ahli Umno ...'

Umno suffuses in fear as it amends its rules.

The Umno Extraordinary General Meeting over the weekend (Nov 18) approved the rules it wanted changed but not what it should have. It exuded not hope and confidence but fear. The meeting was in camera, except for the opening and closing speeches.

Reporters were barred. Those who came from afar to listen to the debates were pacified with re-runs of the May General Assembly. The mutterings at being cheated when they realised it adds to Umno's difficulties.

It was, in all, more a wake than a call to arms.

The still-extant David-and-Goliath quarrel between its president, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and its jailed, expelled deputy president continues to cast a pall and rob Umno of its verve and wherewithal.

Mahathir set the tone. He begged, pleaded, cajoled Umno to renew its struggle, which only it can, for the Malays, raised the usual bogeys to unite the Malays and Malaysians behind him. For a meeting called to amend its rules, it was not what he should have said but is what one has come to expect from him.

The usual suspects were toted out to blame for what happened in Umno, Malaysia, the world.

Water off the duck's back

Corruption, of course, is a malignant cancer, but he stopped short of promising to bring to book a few of the more blatant corrupt.

The de facto law minister castigates the chief justice for his holiday with his favourite lawyer, but the Attorney-General decides it is all in a day's work.

He should make it an absolute rule - which it once was - that any minister, judge or senior civil servant investigated for corruption and abuse of office be suspended on half-pay as those junior to them endure, and told to resign if his conduct was found to be less than honourable.

The Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) should be returned to its independence and be beholden not to the Prime Minister, as now, but to Parliament, and whose head must roll if he is derelict in his duties. The power to prosecute should rest not with the Attorney-General but the ACA.

But it is defanged. Once its director could put to political pasture two mentri besars; the best he can do now is only submit reports to the Attorney-General. It takes the blame for political second-guessing.

The delegates were unimpressed. It was like water off a duck's back. He talked in sixes and sevens, not addressing the concerns over the rule changes. They wanted the party returned to its members, branches and divisions, not to have it controlled, as now, by an oligarchy.

Serious impediments are put in the way of any who want to challenge it. Thirty percent of the 165 Umno divisions must approve a candidate for the president, 15 for the deputy president, eight for the vice-president and two for the supreme council.

Nothing has changed

Why should not, they ask, allow a member stand for any post, from the president down, and let the voters - the delegates - decide if he is worth supporting?

This rule, a delegate sombrely reminded me, encourages corruption. He needs a war chest, which he often does not have, but he must visit divisions to seek their nomination. And depend on those business people and others with money to spare.

If he should win and rise up the political ladder, his moneyed helpers would demand their pound of flesh.

It is willy nilly reduced to political careers, limited only to those who have money or have access to it.

This rule is unaltered. This keeps the oligarchy, not members, in control. Nothing has changed, therefore, after the rules were amended.

This worried delegates more than the rules approved on Saturday. And it showed. "The house is on fire," said one, "and you are worried if the windows are closed!"

The Anwar factor

It showed. Looking around, I saw not confidence, arrogance, verve, hope but concern, doubt, fear. They came for words of assurance and hope; instead they got more of the hectoring and threats from their leaders. They know Umno is alight, and are aghast the fire is not put out.

Like in any Umno crisis since 1998, the unseen ghost in its deliberations, in camera, in conspiracy, now even in the open, is Anwar. But rather than taking members into its confidence to remove it, the Umno oligarchy shut them out.

However you look at it, Umno's future is linked irrevocably to what happens to Anwar. There are not ifs and buts to it. Even Umno accepts it. How else could talks have begun, as it has, with the Anwaristas on how it could be satisfactorily resolved?

MGG PILLAI is a freelance columnist. He also runs the Sangkancil discussion group.