Khairy has set Umno Youth on a bold new path, but we'll have to wait and see whether he'll be true to his message of moderation.
FMT
Khairy Jamaluddin and Muyhiddin Yassin have hit the nail on the head. The speech the Deputy Prime Minister gave on Tuesday and the speech given by the Umno Youth chief coincide on several key points, not the least of which is the emphasis on the need for the party to go down – or rather go back – to the grassroots. They called for an end to useless rhetoric in favour of letting actions speak for the party.
Khairy’s unsurprisingly progressive speech reflects his move towards the middle ground, defensive of the enshrined rights of the Malays but recognizing that Malaysia belongs to both the natives and the immigrants who took up citizenship and, of course, their descendants. And citizenship, he sort of tells us, carries with it a responsibility: citizens are obliged to uplift one another.
The speech looks toward building the youth as a palpable moving force in the Malaysian polity, and takes a brutally honest look at why the Malays have not uplifted themselves despite the wealth of affirmation action programmes dealt out by the government.
Dose of reality
Khairy toes the government line on several points. Nevertheless, his speech is the dose of reality the assembly has been needing for a long time.
Any article claiming to sum up the speech has to view it in the context of its totality, which is a call to national unity. Yes, there was the usual chest-thumping over the need for Malay rights to be respected, the usual spiel about how much the Malays have sacrificed for non-Malays to become citizens of Malaysia, but all this was framed within a call to unity, boldly articulated: “We no longer bring up the matter of the citizenship rights that were accorded, and we accept the fact that our non-Bumiputera friends are people of this country as citizens. My country, your country, our country!”
While it may not be technically true (in fact, it may be an outright lie, but we’ll write it off as over-exaggeration) that there are no Malay voices questioning the citizenship rights of the non-Malays, for this kind of message to come out of an Umno general assembly is nearly unprecedented, to the point of being novel for it’s rarity. Though Khairy did harp a little on non-Malays not respecting the privileges of the Malays, it was nonetheless uplifting to hear an Umno leader acknowledge that this country also belongs to the non-Malays who know no home other than Malaysia. It was a step forward, and one that we could stand to see a lot more often.
His remarks on vernacular education also concurred with some of the opinions previously expressed in FMT columns, largely in regard to vernacular schools needing to do their part in fostering national unity. As previously noted in our columns, vernacular school students lack fluency in Bahasa, a grave oversight as it is the national language and thus the link between Malaysians of different cultural backgrounds.
Khairy’s blunt acknowledgement of the failure of Umno to uplift the Malays was also not disappointing as he did not fall into the familiar rhetoric of Chinese-bashing so common at Umno’s annual assemblies. Noting that there had been “lots of rhetoric” on the issue, he asked where the results were. A good question indeed. He pointed out that this extended beyond education and economy, all the way to social ills that plague newspaper headlines.
But the pertinent question is how Khairy intends to move forward with the issues. This is where his agenda and Muyhiddin’s truly converge – a reinvention of what the party needs to do to remain relevant. Both Muyhiddin and Khairy acknowledged in their speeches that rhetoric was not getting Umno anywhere and the party must return to the grassroots to discover what’s happening on the ground. Observe Khairy’s exhortation to action:
“I want to give all of you a task; a KPI. Please identify how many Malay professionals you have in your division; please count how many Malay contractors receive government contracts in your division; please count how many young Malays enter university in your division; find out how many young Malays are plagued by social ills in your division. Umno Youth will form a special secretariat at the central level to assist with the monitoring and the implementation of the Malay agenda at the grassroots level and introduce a Compliance Scorecard for this purpose. We always have plans but don’t do so well with implementation.”
In essence, Khairy is directing Umno Youth to set foot on the ground and reconnect with the Malay struggle. The struggles of a community change over time, and with the impending implementation of the GST, the removal of the fuel subsidy, the rising cost of living, the inability to afford housing, there is no more pertinent time to redefine what is the struggle of the modern Malay in Malaysia’s troubled socio-economic situation.
But now, we remove the rose-tinted glasses and try to look beyond the speech and at the politics behind it.
We must note that Khairy did mention to reporters that he had to change his speech once the deputy party president finished his at the joint Pemuda, Wanita and Puteri assembly launch as it touched on many topics that he himself intended to address. The political implications of that remark are interesting indeed, especially when you consider that Muyhiddin essentially declared himself Mahathir’s man in his speech last night, which challenged some of the party president’s policies and decisions.
Power shift
So what is Khairy’s game here? Is he sensing the tilting power shift in Umno and aligning himself with Mahathir? Or perhaps he truly did intend to address those topics all along, a departure from the party line he’s firmly toed during his tenure. Either way, he has to be cognizant of the implications of Muyhiddin’s speech, which sent Najib scrambling to Parliament instead of making his presence felt at the assembly. Khairy also knows better than anyone that standing in the way of Mahathir never bodes well, as seen during his fall from grace once former prime minister Abdullah Badawi was ousted from the post.
Either way, we must remind Khairy to be a man of his word. He has set Umno Youth down a bold new path, and deviating from it will earn him the scorn of constituents who have bought into the new politics he has been selling. In truth, Khairy has a lot of political capital among the youth – a support base that will mature into voters – and he must work to keep that support base intact should he wish to ascend to the prime minister’s seat. The image of the moderate and the actions to support that image are increasingly important to Khairy’s ability to appeal across the board, and a failure to uphold that image would be tantamount to political suicide.
After all, the fall of Najib’s credibility is largely seen in his failure to uphold his word and promises to the electorate, and he now stands on the brink of being deposed, with Mahathir’s machinery closing in fast. Najib’s quest for popularity, which he has carried on at the expense of showing the guts to take the issues by the horns, plays a big part in why his message of wasatiyyah is discounted as merely hot air to be blown at world leaders while the situation at home grows progressively worse.
But for now, we’ll give Khairy the benefit of the doubt and hold him to his word that he intends to lead with a message of “hope instead of destruction”. Do not doubt that there are many eyes watching the charismatic leader, and under that spotlight only he will determine if he is indeed our hope for sane governance.
Khairy Jamaluddin and Muyhiddin Yassin have hit the nail on the head. The speech the Deputy Prime Minister gave on Tuesday and the speech given by the Umno Youth chief coincide on several key points, not the least of which is the emphasis on the need for the party to go down – or rather go back – to the grassroots. They called for an end to useless rhetoric in favour of letting actions speak for the party.
Khairy’s unsurprisingly progressive speech reflects his move towards the middle ground, defensive of the enshrined rights of the Malays but recognizing that Malaysia belongs to both the natives and the immigrants who took up citizenship and, of course, their descendants. And citizenship, he sort of tells us, carries with it a responsibility: citizens are obliged to uplift one another.
The speech looks toward building the youth as a palpable moving force in the Malaysian polity, and takes a brutally honest look at why the Malays have not uplifted themselves despite the wealth of affirmation action programmes dealt out by the government.
Dose of reality
Khairy toes the government line on several points. Nevertheless, his speech is the dose of reality the assembly has been needing for a long time.
Any article claiming to sum up the speech has to view it in the context of its totality, which is a call to national unity. Yes, there was the usual chest-thumping over the need for Malay rights to be respected, the usual spiel about how much the Malays have sacrificed for non-Malays to become citizens of Malaysia, but all this was framed within a call to unity, boldly articulated: “We no longer bring up the matter of the citizenship rights that were accorded, and we accept the fact that our non-Bumiputera friends are people of this country as citizens. My country, your country, our country!”
While it may not be technically true (in fact, it may be an outright lie, but we’ll write it off as over-exaggeration) that there are no Malay voices questioning the citizenship rights of the non-Malays, for this kind of message to come out of an Umno general assembly is nearly unprecedented, to the point of being novel for it’s rarity. Though Khairy did harp a little on non-Malays not respecting the privileges of the Malays, it was nonetheless uplifting to hear an Umno leader acknowledge that this country also belongs to the non-Malays who know no home other than Malaysia. It was a step forward, and one that we could stand to see a lot more often.
His remarks on vernacular education also concurred with some of the opinions previously expressed in FMT columns, largely in regard to vernacular schools needing to do their part in fostering national unity. As previously noted in our columns, vernacular school students lack fluency in Bahasa, a grave oversight as it is the national language and thus the link between Malaysians of different cultural backgrounds.
Khairy’s blunt acknowledgement of the failure of Umno to uplift the Malays was also not disappointing as he did not fall into the familiar rhetoric of Chinese-bashing so common at Umno’s annual assemblies. Noting that there had been “lots of rhetoric” on the issue, he asked where the results were. A good question indeed. He pointed out that this extended beyond education and economy, all the way to social ills that plague newspaper headlines.
But the pertinent question is how Khairy intends to move forward with the issues. This is where his agenda and Muyhiddin’s truly converge – a reinvention of what the party needs to do to remain relevant. Both Muyhiddin and Khairy acknowledged in their speeches that rhetoric was not getting Umno anywhere and the party must return to the grassroots to discover what’s happening on the ground. Observe Khairy’s exhortation to action:
“I want to give all of you a task; a KPI. Please identify how many Malay professionals you have in your division; please count how many Malay contractors receive government contracts in your division; please count how many young Malays enter university in your division; find out how many young Malays are plagued by social ills in your division. Umno Youth will form a special secretariat at the central level to assist with the monitoring and the implementation of the Malay agenda at the grassroots level and introduce a Compliance Scorecard for this purpose. We always have plans but don’t do so well with implementation.”
In essence, Khairy is directing Umno Youth to set foot on the ground and reconnect with the Malay struggle. The struggles of a community change over time, and with the impending implementation of the GST, the removal of the fuel subsidy, the rising cost of living, the inability to afford housing, there is no more pertinent time to redefine what is the struggle of the modern Malay in Malaysia’s troubled socio-economic situation.
But now, we remove the rose-tinted glasses and try to look beyond the speech and at the politics behind it.
We must note that Khairy did mention to reporters that he had to change his speech once the deputy party president finished his at the joint Pemuda, Wanita and Puteri assembly launch as it touched on many topics that he himself intended to address. The political implications of that remark are interesting indeed, especially when you consider that Muyhiddin essentially declared himself Mahathir’s man in his speech last night, which challenged some of the party president’s policies and decisions.
Power shift
So what is Khairy’s game here? Is he sensing the tilting power shift in Umno and aligning himself with Mahathir? Or perhaps he truly did intend to address those topics all along, a departure from the party line he’s firmly toed during his tenure. Either way, he has to be cognizant of the implications of Muyhiddin’s speech, which sent Najib scrambling to Parliament instead of making his presence felt at the assembly. Khairy also knows better than anyone that standing in the way of Mahathir never bodes well, as seen during his fall from grace once former prime minister Abdullah Badawi was ousted from the post.
Either way, we must remind Khairy to be a man of his word. He has set Umno Youth down a bold new path, and deviating from it will earn him the scorn of constituents who have bought into the new politics he has been selling. In truth, Khairy has a lot of political capital among the youth – a support base that will mature into voters – and he must work to keep that support base intact should he wish to ascend to the prime minister’s seat. The image of the moderate and the actions to support that image are increasingly important to Khairy’s ability to appeal across the board, and a failure to uphold that image would be tantamount to political suicide.
After all, the fall of Najib’s credibility is largely seen in his failure to uphold his word and promises to the electorate, and he now stands on the brink of being deposed, with Mahathir’s machinery closing in fast. Najib’s quest for popularity, which he has carried on at the expense of showing the guts to take the issues by the horns, plays a big part in why his message of wasatiyyah is discounted as merely hot air to be blown at world leaders while the situation at home grows progressively worse.
But for now, we’ll give Khairy the benefit of the doubt and hold him to his word that he intends to lead with a message of “hope instead of destruction”. Do not doubt that there are many eyes watching the charismatic leader, and under that spotlight only he will determine if he is indeed our hope for sane governance.
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