The interesting strategy of UMNO

Among the political parties in Malaysia, UMNO was hit the hardest after GE14. It is riddled with corruption. The formal prime minister Najib Abdul Razak was convicted of accepting bribe while his wife involved in influencing her husband in policies for her benefit. It was even spread that she was the real prime minister of the country.

UMNO is also known to participated in the collapse of the Harapan government in 2018. While supporting Muhyiddin of Bersatu as the prime minister, they eventually took over the governance of the country which to many is illegitimate.

It is an up-hill battle for UMNO this round. Its reputation is in shamble, its alliances MCA and MIC are just a shadow of their past, more over they still fought against each other over the constituencies that they are allocated with. They did little to service the people of their constituencies and most of the time changing to another one when the support dried up. UMNO is actually alone in this fight, moreover, it has a reputation problem to resolve.

True enough, even before the official nomination day, other parties quickly labelled UMNO as corrupt with incompetent leadership. Ahmad Zahid, who is the president of the party, is view with close association with the former prime minister and tough for him to claim uninvolved in the corruption, even though her was declared innocent in one of the cases.

Moreover, rumor spreads that the sole purpose of their eager for election was to enable them to regain power which will shield them from lawsuits against them on corruption. I have no way to verify this as I am not their inner circle. 

The last straw that broke the camel's back was the financial report released on 3rd of November 2022 showed a deficit of 800 billion ringgit. The amount is really hard to swallow. The prime minister did not even wait till the release of the report before he dissolved the parliament. 

To be frank, UMNO cannot be blamed for the deficit, there was 2 years of lock down due to Covid-19. Businesses were badly affected, people became unemployed, not to mention the need to obtain medical tools and equipment to support the fight against the virus. In fact, the deficit was only 80Billion ringgit in 2020. The spike was due to Covid-19, UMNO was unfortunate to be the one answering for this deficit.

UMNO needs to re-invent themselves and they cannot depend on in unreliable alliances who are more than a parasite than supportive partner. They are in fact liabilities, evidence from their campaign lacking in substance while fault finding on their opponents. It is clear sign of their incompetence.

How does UMNO strategize itself?

First, they removed many old guards from their candidacy. Zahid further urged the seniors to give way and support the younger generation. In the process, UMNO is making attempt to move away from their past.

Second, UMNO knows that Zahid is a liability, and that rivals already claim his ambition to be the next prime minister, scaring people away from voting for UMNO. UMNO therefore maintains Ismail Sabri Yaqoob as their leader and prime minister should they come back as the governing body of Malaysia.

But the most impressive thing so far is their lack of attack on their opponents, thus far. I have yet to see their campaigns critical of their opponents.  They focus on what they can do for the people while rebutting the attacks of others. I followed Khairy Jamaluddin and noted his thanks to the people of Rembau whom he served; he was sincere. I have yet to see others to do so.

Video 1. Khairy thanking his present constituency for support him

I also checked on some other candidates, most of which with little or no negativity on others.

What can UMNO do more then?

Going through the activities of their candidates, I noted that they mainly focus on Malay with some news on Indians. There is almost no engagement with Chinese. It is difficult to see that they are for the people and limited to the Malay community. They really need to move out of their comfort zone and expand their coverage to include dialogue with ALL races.

Khairy for instance, is seen campaigning in Malay majority community, I still yet to see him visiting the Chinese community.

In addition, they focus their propaganda on giving to the poor, the only problem here is that it does not show case their plan for the future. Supporting the many families in need only means the problem of the past and present policies, and that policies need to change and not escalate. The government cannot continue to give the people a fish, but to teach them to fish.

The quota system is the one policy resulting in more Malay families in need. There is no need for them to work for what they want, and in the long run leads to a lack in competence and competitiveness not only by race, but by nation. Quota system is the one destroying the Malay.

Should UMNO want to truly be the leader of the country, it really needs to represent all Malaysians and not Malay alone while leaving the Chinese and Indians be handled by their useless alliances, MCA and MIC.