Anything But Umno And Ex Umno

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When lawyer-activist Haris Ibrahim first coined the phrase “Anything but Umno” in 2011, he had to wait seven years until 2018 before the voting public rejected Umno/BN to vote Pakatan Harapan into government. (Both the English and Malay acronyms are the same - ABU - Asalkan bukan Umno in Malay)
In October 2022, less than a year before his death due to cancer and after the elected Harapan government was toppled by the traitorous Sheraton Move in 2020, he expanded it to include those PKR defectors who contributed to the fall - Azmin Ali, Zuraida Kamaruddin, and Saifuddin Abdullah - the untrustworthy trinity.
Another metamorphosis was made in November of the same year when Haris included PAS under the category. He explained: “It looks like Harapan has to turn to Umno/BN to avoid a PAS-dominated government, which is what would happen if PN (Perikatan Nasional, the coalition whose main partners are PAS and Bersatu) was allowed to take the lead in forming the new administration.
“I have touched on two elements regarding the divisive politics of the country. One is ethnicity. The other is religion and PAS represents the most dangerous of the latter,” he said.
To these, I would like to humbly add ex-Umno too. It looks like once one is tainted with the Umno blood and DNA, it’s forever. No matter what they say they will do, or the unfair suffering they have undergone before, once they come into power, they forget all that.
We have never had a prime minister who was not from Umno or previously did not hold a very high position in Umno. Current Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim himself was a deputy president of Umno and finance minister in 1998 when he was sacked by then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and subsequently incarcerated.
Therein lies the problem - all of them think that once they become PM, they can do what they pretty much want. Promises were made merely to get to that place.
The late Haris IbrahimBear with me as I trace the PMs. The first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, was great, right? Not all the time. Remember he fought off Umno’s first president Onn Jaffar in the 1940s who advocated multiracial parties to ensure racial equality and peace. What would Malaysia be if that had happened?
We will never know, will we? But one thing is clear: the racial and religious politics that this country was built on, and suffers from, may have been far reduced if Onn had succeeded.
The second PM, Abdul Razak Hussein, together with other so-called young Turks from Umno, including one Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Musa Hitam, then-Selangor chief minister Harun Idris, and others, helped engineer a coup to oust Tunku, after the ruling party performed badly in the 1969 elections.
The racial riots of May 13 that year actually started from a demonstration at Harun’s house in Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur, sparking off the first major racial riots in Malaysia since independence in 1957.
Razak put in the controversial New Economic Policy (NEP), hastening bumiputera participation in key jobs and businesses, often at the expense of the non-bumiputera. The abuse of the NEP, tasked with the noble aspiration of eliminating poverty irrespective of race, saw a new bumiputera super-rich political and business class.
This was the continuation of an Umno policy which at its root promoted Malay insecurity, allegedly due to the non-Malays and their superior economic position, while not doing enough for the poor Malays to lift them out.
Umno supportersIt fed the fears of Malays that they would be left behind and gave rise to the erroneous belief that the non-Malays were the prime cause of their problems. The real reasons lay somewhere in between, as well as the failure of the government to lift living standards across the board when it had many resources and a head start to do so.
Pardoning a crooked politician
Abdul Razak’s successor, Hussein Onn, son of Onn Jaffar and whose wife and Abdul Razak’s wife were sisters, came to power after Abdul Razak died of leukaemia in 1976. He was thought of as straight and straightforward.
Under his tenure, Harun was charged with corruption and found guilty but not before he turned down an offer to be an ambassador to Indonesia which would have removed him from the political scene - avoiding prosecution.
Harun was pardoned by the king in 1982 after serving three-and-a-half years of his six-year sentence for corruption involving millions of ringgit.
Thus, history shows that a crooked politician had already been pardoned. That was not all. During Mahathir’s tenure as PM, a politician serving a life sentence for murder in 1983 was pardoned and released in 1991. Mokhtar Hashim had originally been sentenced to hang but it was subsequently commuted to life.
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi succeeded Mahathir in 2003. After achieving an unprecedented win in the 2004 general election on the promise of fighting corruption, he backtracked, not even implementing the promised Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC).
There were many complaints about his administration too, including the influence of the so-called fourth-floor boys, led by one Khairy Jamaluddin, Abdullah’s son-in-law, and allegations that his son Kamaluddin Abdullah and others got preferential treatment.
After a poor showing at the 2008 polls, as corruption prevailed, Abdullah made way for Abdul Razak’s son, Najib Razak to become prime minister in 2009. Almost from that time, Najib was involved in 1MDB and the trail of disasters which cost the country some RM50 billion in losses. Double that if you include opportunity costs.
Former Umno president Najib Abdul RazakNajib lost the election in 2018 and Harapan came to power after an electorate fed up with grand corruption rejected Umno/BN for the first time since independence in 1957. Anwar and Mahathir were in alliance then to overthrow Najib, which they did. But Mahathir had different ideas after he became interim PM.
The Sheraton Move of 2020 saw Muhyiddin Yassin - deputy prime minister under Najib before the latter sacked him and who allied with Mahathir in Harapan - become prime minister.
He is remembered most for declaring an emergency to stay in power, endangering people by forcing an election in Sabah during Covid-19, and using the Employees Provident Fund’s coffers through withdrawals to stimulate the economy.
Muhyiddin lost power when 15 Umno MPs withdrew support for him and Umno’s Ismail Sabri Yaakob was appointed the ninth PM, returning power to Umno for the first time since 2018. Following the election of November 2022, Anwar, whose Harapan won the most seats, became PM with the support of Umno as well as Sarawak and Sabah parties.
Influenced in the Umno ways
It’s plain from this short history that every PM to date has had a deep and lasting connection with Umno, and occupied a very high position there, being at least at the number two level. They joined the most bigoted and racial party from their youth, a party which promulgated the view to Malays that others are a threat.
All prime ministers in the country so far have been influenced in the Umno ways and were no different from them, using political power to stay on, propagate their narrow views, and justify the rise of their business and political cronies to riches without the requisite work.
Paradoxically, that results in the ignorance and the continued poverty of the ordinary Malay, who these PMs claim to help because the system is not designed for them. Instead, corruption and patronage result in the waste of resources instead of growing them for the benefit of all.
If education was a way to lift the masses out of poverty, it is much less so now because the poor are deprived of a good education due to a sharp decline in standards at government schools which no one is worried about.
Anwar’s corruption fight is hopelessly debilitated by the political consideration of shielding a former PM and a current deputy PM from rightful punishment under the law, a move which would encourage and perpetuate this evil which lives in the blood of the people.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (left) and his deputy Ahmad Zahid HamidiAll this is in the typical Umno mould - sowing the seeds of fear and, along with that, greed for the elites. Do anything possible, no matter what, to stay in power and forget about the common people, most of whom are Malays and indigenous people in Sabah and Sarawak.
We must not only reject Umno as Haris advocated but reject anything which is tainted with the whiff of Umno - all those ex-Umno figures masquerading as fighters of the people and forgetting about them after getting into power.
When we rid the system of anything to do with Umno, truly following ABU, and put in power those who have not been associated with that abominable party, then perhaps we can make some real progress in Malaysia. - Mkini
P GUNASEGARAM awaits the day when a true statesperson will run Malaysia.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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