COMMENT Yet again, Umno supreme council member and Tourism Minister Mohd Nazri Aziz has furnished proof of his worth to a party beset with a crisis of direction.

By setting his face firmly against action being contemplated against dissidents within its ranks, Nazri has assumed a position that is bold but lonely.

As voices bay for the blood of dissenters from the majority line that no clear evidence exists to proof that party president and Prime Minister Najib Razak has been flagrantly remiss in handling the 1MDB issue, Nazri, a firm supporter of this view, has come out against punitive action against leaders who disagree with it.

Amid a growing clamour for action against alleged party malcontents, Nazri is speaking up for the view that the party is mature and seasoned enough to allow for dissent within its ranks.

Therefore, he counsels, dissent should not be muzzled and dissidents should not be sin-binned.

“As a party which is celebrating its 70th anniversary next year, we must have enough space for differing opinions and dissidents,” said Nazri matter-of-factly yesterday when commenting on increasing calls for action against putative rebels.

Accentuating these urgings was the disclosure by Umno secretary general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor that the party is mulling action against seven dissidents whose deportment had wearied its patience .

In an attempt at scotching the clamour for punishment, Nazri said he will speak up at the next meeting of the supreme council against a suspension that is reportedly being mulled against dissenters from the majority line that party chief Najib has been extraordinarily remiss in his duties vis-a-vis sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.

In discouraging the impulse to punish dissenters, Nazri was giving circulation to a truism often forgotten in democratic politics.

This is that dissent and the factions they engender are endemic to party politics. A seasoned leadership will not seek to stifle or ban it; rather it would seek to cajole, even coopt it.

Umno has tended in much of his now seven-decade existence to be the political equivalent of the Vienna Boys Choir, singing the party president’s line the way the official newspaper in one-party communist states mimed the chairperson’s line.

Not always the case

But this was not always the case and at some critical junctures, there were episodes where party stalwarts and supporters have diverged from the presidential version of whatever action or policy was causing internal ructions.

Umno is presently in the grip of one such disruption, with the 1MDB issue becoming a cause celebre.

Leading the slew of dissidents on the issue is deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin who a week ago used an incendiary term - “cowards” - when denouncing at a public forum in Johor Baru party leaders who he said were content to leave him alone in calling out alleged wrongdoers on the 1MDB issue.

Inevitably, Muhyiddin’s use of the term heightened the volatility of the issue and raised the agitational pressure for action against him several notches.

This has caused Nazri to step in with a timely reminder that dissent within a democratic and longstanding party should not be proscribed and dissidents should not be suspended or banned.

Nazri reminded his party that had Muhyiddin wanted to collude with former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad in toppling Najib, he would have done so some time before.

Mahathir has been on the warpath against Najib from August last year when he publicly announced that he was withdrawing support from the incumbent PM.

From that point on Mahathir has steadily stepped up his attacks against Najib, leading to his declaration on Feb 12 that if he were Najib, he would quit office at that juncture.

From that cutoff mark, matters, specifically foreign and domestic media reports of mega financial shenanigans in the 1MDB saga, have steadily undermined the position of the PM and left him exposed to a mounting chorus of critics urging his resignation.

When Muhyiddin and party vice-president Shafie Apdal seemingly joined this coterie by saying that public qualms about Najib’s handling of the issue had arrived at a critical mass, the threat of fissures widening to schism has menaced the party.

In recent years, as Umno has had to wrestle with the reality its long dominance of Malaysian politics is a thing of the past, the party has had to cope with challenges to its writ from without and dissent from within.

In helping Umno navigate these rapids, Nazri Aziz has been a canoeist who by paddling on both sides of the craft has displayed a dexterity altogether more useful for its survival as it has been to his career which is long lasting in itself.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.