Bagan Pinang. Let us decide the UMNO candidate

The joke going around nowadays is how many letters of the alphabet do the people of Bagan Pinang know? The answer 6! What are they? They are I, S, A, N, J, B. combine any of those letters, you will get, the two recognizable names of ISA or Najib. Isa being the father and Najib being the son.

If the people in Bagan Pinang and especially the UMNO people know only these 6 letters, UMNO is imperiled. It will indeed show the world UMNO hasn't got a talent pool. Its poverty here is caused by mass desertion of talented people disillusioned by UMNO style politics. Your advance in this career is dependent on your status by being who you are. Progress isn't made to depend on what you are capable of doing. Hence the qualifications that matter in UMNO nowadays are who your father or grandfather is. Once those credentials are established, you are assumed to be a chip of the old block. In what turns out to be contumelious logic, you are assumed to inherit only the good genes minus the tainted ones. That's the kind of arrogance and insolence people come to view as the UMNO type.

If Isa Samad wants UMNO to win, he must come out with a declaration that he will support any candidate chosen by the party excluding himself. Yes! he must declare he doesn't want to be considered as candidate so that UMNO is spared from agony. Next he has to say let's give other UMNO division committee members a chance other than his son. For god's sake, Isa has been the MB for 22 years. Isn't that enough already? If you haven't accomplished most of the things you set out to do as MB in those 22 years, what kind of leader are you? Next spare UMNO the agony of treating BP as a personal company by having your son to contest. UMNO people will abandon you if UMNO does this.

UMNO must get out of this mental rut of believing leadership talent is hereditary. Yes I have said that in the worst case scenario, if UMNO rejects Isa, they could choose his son. But only if the son passes a more stringent set of tests. I am entitled to change my mind as I give more serious thoughts about this. I go back to my previous thinking on this subject. It's time for UMNO to break beyond choosing its leaders on the basis of who they are. Let's choose our leaders based on capability of doing.

How do you judge that? How are you going to identify some measures of a person's capabilities of doing something? I know that UMNO leadership has never subscribed to any process of talent spotting, but let's start one. You can't go on in life, expecting willy nilly, by some fortuitous event, some blokes will surface to take over the reins. You need to have a process of grooming and cultivating leadership talent. It is said that Lee Kuan Yew was jolted to look into this aspect of leadership after watching the nearly catastrophic incident on Apollo 13. If the astronauts hadn't the collected presence of mind and coolness, the mission would have failed and the astronauts would have perished. It stirred Lee Kuan Yew's interest to discover the principles by which these few men were selected over the millions and millions of people qualified to become astronauts. How did the Americans identify these few people?

You need besides a desire to be one, some other objective qualities. If you ask around, all the UMNO leaders in Bagan Pinang have the DESIRE to be an ADUN. So, how do you go about selecting among all who have the same desire?

I go back to the assessment principle practised by my old company Shell. You analyze people on the basis of HAIR qualities. Its practicality lies in the fact that it's reduced to assessing 4 qualities. That should be a boon for the UMNO leadership whose attention span is just a few milliseconds!

First there's the helicopter quality- the ability to see the bigger picture. It's the ability to soar above petty considerations and see things in perspective. The bigger picture with a high degree of immediacy is to ensure UMNO the party wins, not the individual. If Isa insists on standing or he forces the Party to choose him, which rules him out as having the helicopter quality. He has none if he could not see past himself or his personal interest. That rules out the son too as the bigger picture is not to continue the legacy of your father. The bigger picture is ensuring UMNO wins.

Next there is the analytical ability and this is basically inferred from the qualifications you have. If you are just FLCE, sorry we have to say you are inferior to a degree holder. There must be some objectivity in our assessment. I have nothing personal against FLCEs. It's just business.

Next, the candidate must have imagination or the creative quality. He can think of some creative ways to shore up loyalty of people to the leadership. By imagination we don't mean the pointless voyage of the mind but purposeful imagination. It's the ability to picture a number of possibilities at the same time.

Then, the candidate must have a sense of reality. This is the ability to match your desires with your capabilities. If you have limitations, you should be realistic enough not to dream the impossible. If you are an FLCE, please don't impose your desire on the party. Just be a class F contractor.

If this person has all these qualities, we can then project his potential. We can actually predict where he will be in 10 years time. If UMNO leaders don't think about these things, they are not thinking actually about UMNO's future. If they don't, we can only conclude, that UMNO has no future.

I have been inundated by calls from friends asking me who I thought will be UMNO's candidate. I don't know, I said. The usual method is to submit a list containing the names of all AJK BAHAGIAN and give them to the KETUA PERHUBUNGAN. Let's face it. Every UMNO dickhead wants to be an ADUN even though you have only an FLCE qualification. (Failed LCE) Next the KETUA PERHUBUNGAN will talk to director of operations and he in turn brings the matter up to the UMNO president. That's how a candidate is chosen.

UMNO needs somebody who is qualified and not tainted. Doing so, they don't have to answer questions relating to qualifications or some past indiscretions. They can concentrate in offering voters what UMNO wants to do with the state and country and their lives. How can UMNO make their lives better?

The latest I hear, UMNO is still sorting things out. The whole thing is in a mess. I too am fed up of the game these UMNO men play. So I decided to have a poll on who we think  should or shouldn't be UMNO's candidate for Bagan Pinang. The poll will run until the 28 because on the 29^th September, UMNO will announce the candidate.

There are 3 choices. Isa samad, Najib Tan Sri Isa or anyone but Isa and Najib. Let's send a clear message.