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UMNO DIAMKAN SUARA PERUBAHAN

Rencana oleh sdr Rehman kali ini menggambarkan ujudnya satu kesedaran senyap dari ahli bawahan umno untuk memperbaiki imej parti mereka.

Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin dilapurkan sugul dan terkejut selepas mesyuarat MKT 30 /11/2000 lalu. Cadangan-cadangan bernas yang diambil dari pelbagai pihak dalam parti nampaknya diketepikan sahaja dalam mesyuarat MKT itu. Ia tidak berdaya untuk diterima sebagai agenda dalam perhimpunan agung 18/11/2000 nanti.

Sebaliknya UMNO mengekalkan sistem pemilihan pemimpin tertinggi berdasarkan undi dari 2000 perwakilan. Ia juga mengurangkan musim pemilihan itu mengikut tempoh pemilu.

Ini merupakan tamparan hebat kepada angin perubahan dalam umno. Ia mula retak semasa kes Tengku Razaleigh, dan semakin berkecai sejak kes Anwar bergegar. Nampaknya pandangan pelbagai pihak dalam umno sendiri tidak dilayan. Padahal umno kalah teruk dalam pemilu yang lepas. Ia nampaknya terus berdegil dan masih menerima Mahathir sebagai ketua dalam perhimpunan bulan Mei lalu. Kini apabila sedikit ruang dibuka untuk bersuara, ia disisihkan begitu sahaja.

"The proposals I received were quite comprehensive and very popular ," said Muhyiddin, "and the grassroots voting was the most popular proposal."

Muhyiddin menyatakan cadangan2 yang beliau terima agak lengkap dan popular. Malah undi golongan akar-umbi adalah satu cadangan yang paling popular.

Apabila suara-suara akar-umbi dipersiakan sahaaja, nampak jelas siapa yang menguasai pentas. Pemimpin tertinggi umno masih belum bersedia untuk berubah. Jika pandangan akar-umbi mendapat layanan sedemikian, apakah lagi yang boleh diharapkan kepada para perwakilan? Mereka hanya datang untuk melicinkan pinggan serta bertepuk walaupun Mahathir mengejek tuhan.

Semakin lama Mahathir berada dipuncak kuasa, semakin parah umno tertikam.

UMNO< DAN NASIBNYA - SATU KIASAN

Kini umno sudah semakin tempang. Jika umno karam dan tenggelam jangan umno menuduh pembangkang sebarangan. Mahathir sendiri yang menebuk lubang walaupun dia berada di tengah-tengah lautan. Bila itu berlaku, dia akan berlepas dengan sebuah helikopter. Namun begitu tiada sesiapa yang akan mengizinkan pendaratannya. Ketika itu baru dia tahu apa yang lebih berguna dan apa yang sudah menjadi sia-sia. Dipendekkan cerita, meletuplah ia di udara.....

-TJ Man Kubur-

http://www.agendamalaysia.com/detailinf.asp?gnum D1&num D628

Tuesday, 31 October 2000

No Amends Made
(1/11/00)

Comment by Rehman Rashid

Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin reportedly looked shell-shocked after the Oct 30 Umno Supreme Council meeting. The Umno veep's exhaustive proposals for constitutional changes to the party, distilled from a diligent survey of the party's rank-and-file, didn't even get past that meeting to be discussed at the upcoming Nov 18 special general assembly.

Basically, the proposed amendments were a deal the party was offering to its top leadership - widen the right to vote among the party's membership, and receive in return longer and stronger mandates from those votes. With surprising cynicism, the Supreme Council kept the suggestion for longer terms and threw out the bit about the wider vote.

Umno retains the current process of choosing its top leadership on the votes of some 2,000 general assembly delegates, but what used to be triennial rounds of elections will now be extended to coincide with national general elections, such that each Umno administration rides in tandem with the five-year terms of Malaysia's elected national legislature. (Indeed, Umno's elections can now be held anytime within 12 months after the general elections, theoretically doubling the term of party office from the present three years to six.)

A rounder slap in the collective face of Umno's ostensibly teeming millions would be hard to imagine. The past couple of years have been the most difficult in the party's history since, well, 1987. Following the Anwar Ibrahim Affair, remembering the Tengku Razaleigh Affair of a decade earlier, the party wilfully resisted breaking apart again. Umno held on through the drubbing it received in last year's general elections, and limped to its general assembly last May resolutely holding itself intact under party president Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Since then, the party has been trying to do what it can to repair the damage to its voter base, amid much earnest talk of "getting back to the grassroots". It was to restore the faith of the party's beleaguered membership that the initiative was taken to revamp the Umno constitution so as to accommodate some of the reformist impulses so strenuously manifested in Umno's political opposition. "The proposals I received were quite comprehensive and very popular," said Muhyiddin, "and the grassroots voting was the most popular proposal."

But perhaps that served only to indicate to Dr Mahathir the extent of disgruntlement remaining in his party.

No doubt, there were valid arguments against the proposals. Certainly, the logistics involved would have been nightmarish, and 30,000 voting members instead of 2,000 might indeed have increased rather than reduced the scope for 'money politics', especially if Umno is as rife with venality as its worst enemies contend.

Remarkably, Dr Mahathir himself seems to share those reservations. "Probably there are people who are so rich that they can get workers from all over Malaysia to ensure that they are nominated," he told the national news agency Bernama. "This is something that is likely to happen. That is why we felt that [supreme council] elections at divisional level would not guarantee that there will not be money politics."

But the proposals did not even get to be dutifully picked apart and dismissed at the upcoming special general assembly and there lies the insult.