The Pahang UMNO Convention-1

Friday 19^th of February, was the first day of the Pahang UMNO Convention. It was going to take place over 3 days in the UITM campus of Jengka, Pahang. The participants for this convention came from the 14 divisions in Pahang.

The idea of this convention is to get UMNO people into one premise and have them brainstorm. Give them space and time to put up arguments, hopes, demands, or just let off steam. At the end of the day, the leaders of the brainstorming teams will come up with resolutions which are eventually streamlined to serve as action plans.

Participants were grouped under workshops- 60 in total covering politics, economics, education, religion and new media. I shall write on these topics in due time. Our teams were called workshops. I like this term as it suggests a self-effacing term that eschews anything other than wanting to be practical and down to earth. No pain and work- no gain stuff.

Perhaps its the reflection of the unadorned and raw thinking of the Pahang UMNO chief- the spontaneous but well meaning MB. It sure beats the prestige sounding term of this lad or that lab. Participants are not placed under any other illusion that this convention is meant to come out with concrete action plans that commit dedication and skunk work. No karaoke sessions, no kebaya fashion shows, no dance shows. No merriment. Sorry Rosnah Sherlin.

The idea of this convention is very sound- let the grassroots leaders come out with resolutions which they co-author and ask them to live up to what they themselves have promised. That is after all, the idea of a resolution- that you resolved to carry out what you have promised and you are bound to see them succeed. Grass root leaders can't accuse the higher leadership of backtracking on their promises of delivering UMNO from decay. The tables are now turned against them. They come out with resolutions and work on them. If UMNO fails, it's because the grass root leaders fail.

So those ketua bahagians who thought of sending participants thinking this convention is just another business as usual gathering are sadly mistaken. We have enough people at the convention to see through this kind of shallow thinking. So if they had sent the tired old faces, thinking that these are capable of coming out with out-of-the box ideas, they are sadly mistaken. Or they have misread the idea behind this year's Pahang UMNO convention.

Two- participants must also realize that resolutions passed reflect their own ideas and interests. Accordingly, whether the organizers of this convention like it or not, the views expressed as resolutions invariably reflect the interests of the participants' profile. If the majority of the participants from UMNO Pekan for example were chosen on the basis of allegiance to certain warlords, the hidden hand behind the interests are not too difficult to identify.

It's unavoidable in the end to avoid seeing the consolidated resolutions being the expression of competing interests of the vocal minorities in the various workshops. I certainly hope, Pekan people especially those participating in the political workshop didn't put up a demand of insisting that a certain leader in Pekan division be the next MB.

Unfortunately these things happened. A keener analysis of the Convention can reveal hidden agendas. Everyone is naturally attracted to power. Hence the political workshops attracted the most number of participants 900 of them into 30 workshops. Madam Mao Tse Tung was certainly correct when she said, while sex is enthralling, its power that endures. The only thing Madam Mao wasn't aware of- she didn't know UMNO people are experts in this field. Sanusi Junid once differentiated the various values of matters of interest in UMNO politics. As expected, the Ringgit Note bearing the picture of our Parliament had the highest value. The Ringgit note with parliament on it had a RM1000 value I think.

The political question to ask and I hoped this was asked was how to prepare and qualify UMNO to regain the seats it lost and along with that, regain its lost credibility and eminence. What to do?

In my own workshop, I told my colleagues a sobering fact- that while UMNO is a Malay party, it can no longer claim a monopoly of representing the entire or even a majority of the Malay population in Malaysia. The facts are these. In the 2008 General Elections there were 5.7 million Malay voters. UMNO candidates who are Malays secured only 2.38 million votes which included non Malay votes. If we subtract some 380,000- voters as being non Malays, that would leave about 2 million Malay voters. Hence UMNO which has a membership of 3.5 million members managed only to get 2 million votes!

What did the figures show? That there are many things wrong about UMNO politics that caused some 1.5 million members of the party to reject Malay candidates. In total, more Malays did not vote for UMNO. 3.7 million of them.

In the next few articles we shall look at UMNO's struggle, empowering the grassroots and UMNO's future challenges. I shall discuss my own new media workshop later.