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By Mansor Puteh I was fortunate to be able to cover two Umno general assemblies when they were held in more cordial and informal surroundings and not at their new headquarters at PWTC. The ones I attended to cover for the paper I was writing for in 1977 and 1978 were held at the main hall on the sixth floor of the old Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka building and the Nirwana Ballroom of the former Hilton Hotel now known as the Mutiara Hotel in Jalan Sultan Ismail, respectively. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the way the subsequent general assemblies were held till now. And this is where Umno should concentrate on, since what happens in their general assemblies seldom reflect the attitude of its leaders and more so on its members; and nothing special or of substance had come out of them.
How is this so? First, the general assemblies have never been used adequately and properly or intelligently, to become the place for the meeting of the minds. From what I and everybody can see, they have become nothing more than the meeting of the clowns where every other delegate wants to be heard, and also to hurt the feelings of others, including those of other races and of their own kind. This is unfortunate, as it gives those who have the brains to bring new ideas into the party which can benefit their members and those of the race which they claim to represent are missed. The Umno general assemblies have become a meeting where those who wish to attract unnecessary attention to themselves are given a lot of space to do so. The motions that they bring to the assemblies have never been beneficial. If they were of any importance to the community and the country, these could have easily been forwarded to their respective leaders who hold important posts in the ministries, without them having to wait for the assemblies to voice them out. In the end, those who can attract attention to themselves by creating jokes and get the loudest laughs and applause will be able to enhance their personal standing and be seen to have ‘leadership’ qualities when this is not and is never the case. Whereas, those who are thoughtful and more intelligent and better qualified are often dismissed. They may give views which are better and more qualified than those that the other delegates can ever think of. But, these views are never debated and approved. Those that are debated are often not the most pressing or important ones. They are basically grouses of the delegates. Umno can reshape its own destiny and become a more important political party to represent the Malays and Muslims if they can start to use these assemblies properly by attracting those who are better trained in all fields, instead of attracting only those who are vocal, yet senseless or unreasonable. And they should not be used as a meeting for clowns but be treated more like a congress, where the delegates and office bearers of the party listen more than they speak. After all, haven’t all of them been doing this for the last one year? Why then do they need to say anything more when they have the necessary platforms to do so? Umno should invite qualified and professional Malays to present their ideas and more importantly, their findings, on which new industries that the government should create in order to create new jobs which the Malay university graduates, especially, can go into. And how they can further improve the well-being and economic standing of the Malays in the country and abroad.
These cannot be found from the delegates who do not have proper specialization. They can only come from those who have it. And if this trend becomes an Umno tradition, surely, those who can and want to clown around in the assemblies in the future will find themselves to be out of place and the ordinary members of Umno will not be eager to support them to represent them in the party and the assemblies. In the end, there will be less politicking in Umno. This is how they can get rid of the unnecessary intra-party bickering and misunderstandings that now seem to happen almost everyday even when the party elections are not around the corner.
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Unfortunately these breed of Malays, who have strong ethics or morality, have shunned UMNO. They are either apolitical or aligned with opposition parties.
Over the last decade we can hardly find any such 'qualified and professional" Malays joining UMNO.
Little wonder we see the same old clowns like Syed Hamid in the cabinet.