Extreme Right Policies of UMNO is Failing

UMNO’s recent gain of winning 88 parliament seats in the last General Elections, 9 more than the 12th sense of security–cum-identity that its sole power base remains with the Malay voters only. Ever since then, UMNO has embarked on extreme right wing policies to consolidate its Malay vote base. It has also unleashed ultra Malay leaders to polarize the nation. From shoot to kill directives, cow slaughtering in national schools, banning the use of the term ‘Allah’ by the Catholic weekly ‘The Herald’, the return of corrupt and tainted UMNO leaders to positions of power to trampling the rights of press freedom and civil society.

PM Najib himself has unashamedly been projecting a ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ character image. ‘Dr Jekyll’ before the 13th and ‘Mr. Hyde’ post GE. The clearest example for all to see was his ‘Nambikei’ policy to win back the Indian votes by having a public signing ceremony and promising to implement the HINDRAF-BN MOU agreement on April 18th 2013. Fast forward 6 months after the GE, almost nothing has come out of it.

To add salt to the wound, Najib had borrowed the term often used ‘marginalization of the minority Malaysian Indians’ and used it in a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour, sayingthat one ‘must not marginalize the majority’! Najib had also backtracked on a needs based policy he advocated in 2010 (New Economic Model) and metamorphosed it to the race GE, has given it a false GE based Bumiputera Economic Empowerment agenda post GE.

All these were geared to the one direction of an extreme right policy of gaining popularity among the Malay voters and ignoring the rest.So the recent by-elections in Sungai Limau which constitute a 93% Malay majority was an interesting testing ground for all to see if these extreme right policies will bear any fruit. Going by UMNO’s intended plans, they should have won the by-elections easily as they were not only supported by the embarking of these recent extreme right policies catering to the Malays but was also aided by powerful party machineries concentrating in one area as well as backed by the BN’s state and Federal Government might.

What turned out was quite ironic. PAS not only won the by-elections but had increased its percentage total polled votes from 48.7% (13th UMNO policies had failed in a predominantly Malay majority constituency. Not fulfilling the HINDRAF-BN MOU signed document which is heading to an eventual HINDRAF pullout is going to severely expose Najib’s ‘Mr. Hyde’s’ character. Whatever ‘Dr Jekyll’ promises that he rolls out thereafter is not going to saveUMNO ever again. GE) to 51.9%. These extreme right