Surendran: Umno's split personality set to stay

PKR vice-president N Surendran said the split personality that had characterised the Umno leadership was set to continue even after six months of a victory in the general election and a more recent re-endorsement of incumbents at internal party polls.

Surendran (left) said if it was felt that successive electoral victories in the national and internal party arenas would infuse the leadership with the confidence to chart new trails, the hope of that was extinguished by the opening overtures of the Umno general assembly.

“If you are expecting change, you’ll have to perish the thought after looking at the speech of Umno’s deputy president at the opening of the youth and women’s wings of the party,” offered the MP for Padang Serai.

“A day earlier, the Umno president was on record holding forth on what has come to be seen as a familiar stance of his when not under pressure - the enunciation of an inclusive vision based on moderation, with a hint that the party under his steering was going to move with the times,” said Surendran, as he warmed to his theme.

“Barely had the public the chance to assess the prime minister’s drift, then his deputy warns the party faithful of threats from western liberalism and deviationist religious teachings,” elaborated Surendran.

The human rights lawyer said if one juxtaposes the separate pronouncements, the feature of the first term of the Najib Abdul Razak administration reasserts itself, with the No 1 scanning the horizon and the No 2 intent on navel-gazing.

“In other words, the split personality of the Najib reign is set to continue, with the PM affecting an inclusiveness and liberalism that will not pan out and the deputy PM focusing on bogus threats to Malay rights and other features of our polity that if at all are under threat, the perils are more from within than without,” mused Surendran.

He observed that this schizophrenia, which he said was a stark feature of Najib’s first years as PM, was set to continue into the second term because the “government was more infatuated with its rhetoric than with the reality of the challenges it faces and of how to proceed.”

“With Umno-BN’s ownership of mainstream media and their manipulation of state-owned channels of information, their media will supinely relay their message and those without access to alternative media are without the means to sieve fact from fiction,” said the human rights advocate.

Thus, Surendran said, the united nation that the PM rhetorically quests after is as delusive as a dream.