KUALA LUMPUR, June 26 – While all this talk about unity government seems to point to Umno focusing on winning back Malay support at the expense of alienating the non-Malays, the deputy chief of the committee tasked with renewing and rejuvenating the party says “we are not fighting for the cause of the Malays alone.”
Datuk Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis says, “We want to win Malaysian support. We are not fighting for the cause of the Malays alone. We are fighting for the Malaysian cause. All communities must feel taken care of.
“Even in 1957, we felt that we could not be independent without bringing along our Chinese and Indian brothers. So we gave citizenship. Umno has sacrificed before.
“1 Malaysia is an affirmation that we are fighting for all. If there is a perception that Umno is fighting only for the Malays, we have to remove that.”
The supreme council member adds that Umno will need a different approach in order to maintain its “market leadership” in the next 50 years as the conditions in the country have changed since independence.
“The demographics have changed, education levels have gone up, the people are more urbanised and there is more technology which created the new media. We have to change otherwise we won’t be able to keep our leadership position.
“Umno was pivotal in gaining independence, we have to keep the good recipe of working with other races. But we need new strategies to deal with the terrain which has changed.”
Jamaluddin, however, declined to discuss strategies in detail.
One senior Umno leader says that Umno is exploring the possibility for a needs-based rather than ethnic-based economic policies as it will widen the scope for assistance to all races without causing poor Malays to lose out.
“Umno is looking into having universal values for economic redressal for poverty and low income,” he said.
Non-Malays who have often felt sidelined by Umno will welcome such proposals but similar sentiments have been expressed in the past and eventually came to nothing.
The question for Umno now is, will the wake-up call it received in the last election be enough for it to finally change with the times?
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