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The Malaysian Insider PETALING JAYA, April 1 – While Anwar sought to present a united opposition today, in another part of town, the main ruling party was in open revolt, with hundreds of supporters meeting at a Kuala Lumpur hotel this morning to demand that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi resign.
Faces in the packed lobby of Hotel Singgahsana in Petaling Jaya were all turned to the projector screen displaying a live broadcast of the forum inside the ballroom, just steps away. The ballroom itself was filled with people squeezed from wall to wall, like gas molecules trying to become one solid.
They came from every part of the country, the 500, and even from as far as London to hear from Umno elders like former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Umno brand names like his son Datuk Mukhriz Tun Mahathir, who is Umno Youth Exco member and a new member of parliament. What a mixed crowd. There were men in suits, women in blings, young people in jeans and T-shirts. The scene was set for a high-voltage gathering. When Datuk Mukhriz took the microphone, the room erupted into cheers. Yes, they knew what was coming and were eager for it. How the Prime Minister had been misadvised by his own, how those advisers included his son-in-law Khairy Jamaludin; talk of cronyism, etc.
When one woman asked a question in English, shouts of “Cakap Melayu!” and the like almost drowned out her query of how Umno was hoping to engage with younger voters like herself.
But the biggest ruckus came when a man asked why Umno did not want to take back Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. The crowd went wild. Shouts of “Kurang ajar!” “Biadab!” rang around the hall and a riot nearly broke out. In the end, the young man had to be escorted out of the hall by the organisers. More for his safety than anything else really.
When former MB Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Khir Toyo tried to address the crowd, he was also shouted down. Obviously they blamed him for losing Selangor. One member of the audience said: “It is quite brave of him to come here and address the people.”
Khir called for an urgent reform of Umno. "We can no longer allow this to be handled in an ad hoc manner," he said in the panel, joined by Umno Johor Information Chief Dr Mohamad Fuad Zarkashi.
Khir did, however, make a point that Umno seemed to get into trouble every 10 years, a point that the keynote and final speaker, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was about to refute.
When the former Premier took to the stage of deliver the closing address, the ballroom erupted into wild cheers and shouts of “Hidup Tun Mahathir!” (“Long live Tun Mahathir!”)
He brought the audience’s attention back to the issue of the day – how Umno, especially its leadership, needs to reform and how they need to go about it. The crowd nodded emphatically in agreement and slowly but surely reduced its decibels to better listen to the soft-spoken but well-seasoned politician.
It was clear many still held him in high regard, even in the present climate. More than two handsful showed their support outwardly, in the button badges they wore on the collars of their Polo tees and lapels of their business suits.
He held them in thrall from the start, spicing his speech on conducting a post-mortem with jokes that seemingly poked fun at himself and his profession even as it sank barbs into his appointed successor.
“In a post-mortem, we cut open the body and find out a lot of things. If it’s cancer, say it’s cancer. If it’s TB, say it’s TB. Don’t go and tell family members that it’s something else because you think that is what they want to hear,” said Mahathir, to great applause.
He spoke about the need for the party to remember its roots, the direction it came from, in order to move forward and not in confusion move backwards. The crowd nodded.
He reminded them that Umno is always full of crisis, not just “once every 10 years or so” as said by Khir Toyo during the panel discussion.
The trick to handling such crises, said Mahathir, is to remember Umno’s “roh pejuang”, the fighting spirit that infused the party’s original struggle as championed by party founder Onn Jaafar. The crowd roared in response, particularly when he mentioned that Umno had always in the past, evolved from “reformasi-reformasi kecil”.
He blamed the disastrous results of the party’s performance on the elements of fear and loathing. Fear from the people who dared not stand up for the truth, who failed to convey the people’s wishes to the leadership; fear from the leadership who failed to listen objectively to the people’s wishes; and loathing from the people who could see that their messages were being manipulated by certain individuals who bore the initials KJ.
Mahathir spoke about the restrictions on the media, a topic which his son Mukhriz had brought up earlier during the panel session. Mukhriz had alleged that the government of the day had turned much of the media machines into propaganda machines, to further interests of “certain individuals”.
The biggest cheers were saved for the calls by Mahathir and his son for Abdullah's leadership to be challenged to save the party.
"Umno risks becoming no longer relevant because there are now more 'yes men' than those who are willing to give dissenting views," said Mahathir. "We must look at ourselves and be brave and take action to correct Umno.” The meeting, which began at 9.30am, ended before lunch, at 12.30pm.
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