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The Malaysian Insider/Straits Times The mid-term departure of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is regrettable, though not a surprise. It was self-inflicted chiefly on account of a management style that was unfocused and often distracted.
The pithier significance is that the party revolt that forced his exit was patently un-Umno, an apparent renunciation of the quasi-feudal Malay political tradition of noblesse oblige. Although Abdullah's leadership failings were many, in the judgment of the party hierarchy and the grassroots, it has never been the Umno way to tell a party president to his face that he has to go because he is damaged goods. Malay disquiet over the erosion of Bumiputera political supremacy in the March parliamentary election, blamed on his wayward stewardship, had to be intolerable for a leadership change to be undertaken in this manner. But, from another perspective, the transition makes Umno look positively democratic: A party chief and concurrent government head who has lost the confidence of Umno Cabinet officers and the party's state and divisional leaders has no mandate left to exercise. Except, no one is prepared to say how much support Abdullah actually has lost in the Umno supreme council. He did not go willingly so much as he was pushed to make way for his deputy, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who must win the presidency in party elections to claim the prime minister's job. Malaysians will most want to know if Abdullah's removal is a watershed event or only a sentencing. Does it signal that Umno has seen the future, after the election fiasco, and is poised to reform itself to push an all-Malaysian agenda? The election results proclaimed that demand. Malay-ism has been Umno's creed since its founding, a value system that was rejected in the election for being out of sync with the aspirations of a multiracial, multicultural nation. Or is the development a case of enraged Malay elites digging in their heels to defend the privileges of political control, which only the ouster of a weak leader could bring about? If so, Malaysians will conclude that bumiputeras are by nature less concerned with nation than with race. The people will get a clearer idea when Najib, the presumptive successor, takes over in March after Umno has chosen its leaders. Abdullah will not contest, the Umno way of declaring retirement. Najib will inherit a Malaysia that has looked a patchwork of discontent and self-destructive tendencies when it could be a beacon of a progressive form of material secularism. He should steer Umno towards the contemporary age and all that it will demand. This will require a vision, exceptional leadership and courage in spades.
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