Manek Urai- One Swallow does not make a summer..
One Swallow at Manek Urai?But 191 will make a swarm. 191 UMNO divisions that is. If they carry out radical reforms on leadership, work ethics and a new vision.
The last thing to do is to treat the UMNO resurgence as a definitive turning point when it was actually flash in the pan. I am referring of course to the near miss by UMNO in winning Manek Urai.
I have written that the recent good showing may be indicative of an UMNO on the rebound. It proved that UMNO's rebound must be preceded and underlined by some necessary factors. These included a re-focused and united leadership, diligent ground troops and a re-branding of UMNO. So long as UMNO indicates that it is adopting these factors, the people's confidence will be there.
UMNO's future and longevity will depend on a leadership serious with the intent of remoulding UMNO's ethos. This brief reprieve is no excuse to slouch on changes that must be taken. For example, will the UMNO president continue with the intention to scrap the quota requirement and allow open contest for top leadership? Will the UMNO leadership implement direct selection of UMNO leadership by delegates at divisional meetings? These moves underscore the need to infuse UMNO with dynamic leadership and free UMNO from being strangulated by elitism.
UMNO's longevity needs quality leadership, the infusion of new talent, good work ethics. This brief interlude at Manek Urai, points to the POSSIBILITY of a continued UMNO revival. It has yet to be actualised and can only be achieved given good leadership. Good leadership that requires good men, dedication and visionary ideas. UMNO slackens to its peril.
Here is the danger- it may throw UMNO into complacency believing things are back to normal. Things aren't. There must be something that UMNO people have done up to the by elections that must served as object lessons.
But what if the UMNO's much touted improvement was achieved on overextended application of resources? Quite apart from the endogenous factors we spoke of above, what if UMNO's comeback was actually the result of explicit horse trading, pork barrel politics, outright buying of votes, intimidation and even fraudulent practices? What if UMNO's touted turning point was achieved on the back of duplicitous machinations? Simply put, they neutralise all the above factors.
One swallow does not make a summer. The fact was- UMNO still lost. This near miss at Manek Urai will no doubt serve as a jolt to PAS and they will redouble their efforts to correct their mistakes. What UMNO wants to do is our prime concern. What took place in Manek Urai must never be treated as a generalisation. Can UMNO duplicate the same intensity and application over the whole country as it did in Manek Urai?
17 comments:
Dato'
I see no reason why UMNO should rejoice...
All Manek Urai showed was that UMNO is STILL UNABLE to get more than 50% support from the Kampong Malays..This is because Manek Urai is made up of 99.9% Malays.
This is discouraging considering Mainstream Media efforts under New Media Heads feverishly trying to entice precious Malay Votes.
Perhaps the "New Measures" by DS Najib is unable to inspire the Malays enough to breach the 50% mark.
Datok,
Betul ke atau fotomogana. Its a byelection and its carpet bombing by US onto Irag. It shold won the war like Pengkalan Pasir by election where more ammunitions been used in MU.
~pemborong payong nasi lemak
sumoberek12
the term is fata morgana- meaning a mirrage. thank you for yr pendapat.
dr nik,
sad, but what you said is probably true
AK,
Is it true that money was one of the factor that umno got to reaCH At least 50% of the voters.With government machinery and loads of free money to buy votes they were indeed desperate to come close or win!
Bro, you remember Pengkalan Pasir? We managed to wrest the win over the incumbent PAS but we lost again in the last General Election?
What can deny that this would not happen again?
Look at the backdrop to the by elections>>
PR is in distress>the leader in court for Sodomy,troubles in all states they are ruling,the Unity talks issues,the split within PAS leadership ranks,MACC investigations,Buah Pala...
BN is riding high > 65% approval ratings,big 1Malaysia campaigns,11 goodies on top of all the liberalisations,Obama phone calls,PPSMI...
And they carpet bomb MU..with all the top guns camped to woo the 12,000.
In 2008 PAS got 5700 odd votes..now they got abt 5300>>so they lost about 400 voters??
So at best only about 600 voters actually bought the BN storyline?And its a story line developed and pushed at all levels ..and involving so many people..and umpteen hours of effort,television time etc etc..
If one is in a commercial arena ;gaining an increase of 0.5% market share at cost of millions of ringgits.. its a non productive strategy.More important..its indicative that potential of that particular market is low so might as well move out into other markets where u can get bigger bangs for ur bucks.
Well..if I am the BN big boss,a few heads needs to roll to atone for the failure at MU.
Salam Dato,
Spot on again ! If UMNO wants to be serious players yet again & not get blown into oblivion forever, it has to be rid of those HAPRAK leaders who despises the rakyat. If they are serious abt reforms, clear ghem out !
Wassalam
Dato,
As they say a win is a win.
PAS actually loss about 400 votes compared to UMNO gaining more than 700 votes.
It is good for UMNO/BN, and as for PAS/Pakatan, they sure will regroup.
If and when both sides take care of good governance, we the rakyat shall benefit in the long run.
UMNO should have won if not the stupid Ahmad Mazlan belittling the peraih ikan!
A friend who went to MU as an election tourist told me he was shocked to see so many OKU voters at Chuchoh Puteri. Go figure!
Every political party can change with the times. It is the right of political parties to be relevant with the demands of the people.
And the fastest way to do this is to follow what your opponents are doing. Why are they getting popular? What policies have they introduced that have effectively satisfied the aspirations of the voters?
Imitation is the surest way of gaining back the support of the electorates. Especially when the same concerns and services can be given and implemented better than your competitors.
Political action is in fact, like servicing your customers in a business environment. The better you can serve and satisfy them, the more they will support your enterprise.
It is that simple. No big deal at all !
Even before the elections, many prime movers of PR have been "beaten" blue & black by BN and all the supposed-to-be-neutral Police, Courts, Anti-Corruption etc.
RPK is no where to be around. Anwar has a sodomy charge to worry about.
Given the situation, PAS could be said to have done quite well though there is a lot of room for improvement.
The close result is a also a good wake-up call tp PAS, DAP & PKR etc. bercerai kita roboh!
It sure don't!!
The question to ask is whether Umno had suffered such a great loss of confidence that it must depend on the aye from a fishing village in order to gain more personal traction to do the right things.
If the answer is yes, the last show of pride and prejudice was bluff. If the answer is no, the present spin about possible revival from reduced loss margin is hype.
You have a sleepy fishing village. Battleship Yamato berthed offshore and fired a twenty-one gun broadside. How does doing so change the key imperatives of building this nation for the future?
Forget the pride. Forget the need for assurances from the grassroots. Just stay focused on doing all things right and all right things.
Like today on the frontpage of one paper. You see the new MOHA saying he's having less sleep. Same like what he had said when he was MOE. This time he's having less sleep trying to process those applications. You can see boxes of them piled up behind him. Since he's new, that means the last MOHA had somehow managed to live with such backlog. Those backlogs seem to have meant nothing to all the ministers of HA past. Otherwise they would have been processed one way or another. Each represents extended suffering of the applicant. If the new MOHA can process them within the next six months, it means they could have been processed at the same speed before. Why weren't they? Is the situation the same in other government agencies and ministries run by Umno? That question, pin up.
Meanwhile at MOE they have decided to increase english hours by reducing music, physical education and science hours.
How many schools have music and PE classes in the first place? How many schools have trained music and PE teachers or even access to school fields in the second place? So if there are none, where are their classes whose hours are to be reduced? Secondly, reducing science hours when the whole problem started with increasing science and maths training makes a mockery of the whole exercise. Thirdly, throwing five billion to buy foreign english teachers and coaxing retirees to come back and teach in rural schools won't work. The qualifications of previous batches of foreign english teachers were not properly filtered because it is not easy to find such a large number needed and retirees in their twilight years cannot be expected to go to rural places to teach. So where to get additional real instructors to help solve the english fluency problem? Lastly, science and maths are growing subjects. Their knowledge pools increase exponentially. Cutting down hours means shrinking what is to be taught of subjects which are expanding on their own. If students in other countries continue on their path of acquiring more science and maths faster, the gap between their knowledge of those subjects, and the same of our students, will only widen in the future under such makeshift solutions. Which means the value-adding, high-income, service-sector thrust focus will flounder. Because the local manpower in the future will be science, maths and technology deficient besides being musically impoverished and physically unhealthy.
Now, how does losing by just 65 votes in a fishing village provide any stimulus or sensation or inspiration to solve backlog applications or educational issues that will affect the future of the country?
Incidentally, battleship Yamato was sunk by aerial bombing on her maiden voyage.
That it was the biggest at the time only served to present an unmissable target.
Umno lost the last round because of one bungalow in Port Kelang. Should one expect anything different from another bungalow, this time in Shah Alam?
These are physical manifestations and evidence of power monopolies havoc wrecked.
There are many more like them. Not just located in the country.
If the MACC is energetic going after small fries, why is it not even more energetic going after bigger fries? Why the deafening silence, and not for the first time?
And how strange it must be that it had to take the last loss of the party to be the big bang that provided amnesty and an escape route to all the big fries now out of the circuit.
Is the integrity of this country still to be measured for the edification of future generations by how smart the big fries are in escaping the clutches of justice and how stupid the small fries are to leave a trail that supreme powers cannot help to hide?
The MACC reports to the Executive arm of democracy. The Executive arm is primarily populated by leaders from one political party. How are the rakyat not to connect the dots for themselves what that means when at the same time the same Executive arm is also the one determining how federal funds are to be distributed wherever it involves projects, and projects are the primary sources of side income of no small amounts?
Now that Manek Urai is lost, would development still be brought to the villagers there? If yes, how much? If no, why not?
How can one talk about unity based on race when development is based on politics?
And if development is not based on politics but on race, will more development also be channeled to opposition-run states that have more of other races?
These are fundamental issues of political gimmickry that have not been solved. They are some of the benchmarks of real reforms.
Not solving them is to give rise to only one conclusion - that double standards are being practiced, that all are equal but some are more equal than others on grounds of political affiliation and expediency. And how equal one can be will be determined by the new notes being printed in a Shah Alam plant that were once printed by De La Mar security printers plc.
So where's the humility before the rakyat, where's the lesson that has been learned, where's the integrity and independence of the institutions whose very oath is to uphold integrity, independence and sovereignty of the rights of every citizen to good governance? That type of sovereignty which has been neglected so much so that three other questions have also been asked repeatedly with no credible answers - are the enforcement forces really apolitical, are election dates impartially selected and is the judiciary promoted on competence only?
Just as there is sovereignty of state, there is also sovereignty for all 27 million of the rakyat - the sovereignty of their rights to good governance. Pin that up, too. It has never been said in any political blog comment before.
The rakyat have a right to good government. They earn it by paying for it through their support and taxes. They have suffered through what they have been given for too many years, decades even. If they want entertainment, they already have teater lagenda.
A short tour'de horizon of reality.
Salam,
As the saying goes: A miss is as a mile. But for losers, they'll say: See! So close what...about 1cm from the outer rim of the bullseye! Kira kenalah!
dT SAK
I THINK UMNO MEMBERS SHOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THE HARD WORK DONE BY DATO MUSTAFA AND THE CREW..IF EVERYONE OF US WHO CARE ABOUT UMNO WERE THERE TO HELP MAYBE WE WILL WIN AFTER ALL..
BUT AS USUAL WE ONLY WANT TO COMMENT..WE OURSELVES ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING TO SUPPORT..SO I AGREE THAT THE PM SAID THOSE WHO ARE NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH WILL NOT GET A SEAT..SHOULD NOT BE A FREE PASSENGER BUT A HARDWORKING ONE
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