UMNO - Unfettered Materialism New Oligarchy ?

UMNO, after all these years of Malay nationalism, still retains the Bahasa Inggeris acronym for United Malays National Organisation in common usage, in speeches, posters and newpaper banner headlines of all languages. Perhaps the Bahasa Malaysia acronym is a too unwieldy: perhaps UMNO is now a word so readily used in national life that it is now part of the Malay lexicon. The revelation that Ummi Hafilda, a small-time Wanita UMNO Klang Gate Baru Chief and key witness at the Anwar Ibrahim trial, managed to get an advertising contract from Pemadam and seeking another from KLIA reinforces the image in the public mind that UMNO is indispensible for its members interested in seeking to improve their business fortunes.

UMNO could very well stand for, depending on how far down you are or up in the pecking order; the United Moneyminded Networkers Organisation, or the Ultimate Money Netting Operation, or any of these, depending where you are from the outside looking in: either the Ultimate Mechanism for National Oppulence, Oppression or Opprobrium.. in that order given the nature of recent events affecting the party. Given all that is being said about it looking after the interests of its cronies, it could very well be nothing more than a collective Union of Magnates, Nepotists and Opportunists.

How did a party established to protect the interests of the Malay race and to win Independence from the British colonialists end up more than half a century later with a reputation for its unusually materialistic and notoriously opportunistic members ? Together with the MCA and the MIC, it has ruled the country for all and more of its independent life as a nation. The party established with the high ideals of service to race and country has by all standards served the country well in the first three decades since 1957. How then did it become so self-serving in the last and most recent decade ? How did a party respected for its principles in its early days degenerate into such disrepute ?

The leaders of UMNO champion the Malay race and the definition of its effective membership converges entirely with the definition of the Malay race spelt out in the Malaysian Consitution and underpins the policies of special privileges formulated for their interests and the nation as a whole. The New Economic Policy implemented after the May 13 1969 riots could not have been effectively implemented without a working definition of the Malay race. The definition used singled out the indigenous people speaking the Malay language, practicing Malay customs, culture and Islam; including recent additions by mix marriages and assimilation of other races and groups. The working definition become the operative mechanism for the party to manage its constituency, propagate its leadership strategies and implement its governing modalities. The political power of the country was now premised on the definition of the "bumiputra".

Once a definition has been adopted it became a powerful and effective instrument for its time for the development and progress of the Malay race through beneficent policies of guaranteeing education, health and honourable livelihood. The progress achieved must be lauded for its humanitarian success in eradicating poverty, illiteracy and want within the Malay race. But the Malaysian realpolitik is pre-occupied with the issues of communal competitiveness and acrimony and the working definition of the Malay race becomes useful again in developing and implementing formulas and recipes required for guranteeing communal accomodation and co-existence. Under the umbrella of such policies, the materialistic naivette and innocence of the Malay race could be protected from the overwhelming acquisitiveness, robustness and tenacity of the other communities.

The present Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had written once about the gene pool of the Malay race; how inbreeding practices reduced the genetic vigour of the community. It is also equally true that superior assimilated genes from outside the community once accepted as falling within the definition of the community can quickly grow to dominate it. Pseudo-malays, for instance, from outside the community but defined as one of the community, accepted and recognised as one of the community, may possess the very acquisitive, robust and tenacious traits that favour them to dominate it. The insulation of the Malay race through the New Economic Policy sought to protect them from the predation of the other communities. Yet the same insulation of the NEP served to provide the infiltrating elements, all to themselves, a fertile virtually unprotected substrate with which to plant themselves and predate and thrive. For the Malay community, there was no protection from the threat of this strain lurking within.

Over at least four decades of bitter internecine intra-party battles for leadership of the party with varying outcomes, in the end by 1987, virtually all of the best and brightest of the new generation were subjugated by a new dominant group and the losers dispatched by their victorious competition to the ignominy of having to form a new but "inferior" party appealing to the same constituency. The electoral fortunes of the new party in the decade that followed were dismal as would be expected; but the now dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO sought to let loose their "alien" acquisitive tendencies, once contained within the party's aspirations to serve the entire community as a whole.

The dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO receded into a kitchen cabinet as opposed to a showcase cabinet; making all the real decisions of who got what, when and how in government. It became a matter of relative ease for the dominant strain to leverage their positions of unrestrained, unchallenged and unchecked power to manipulate the minor bit parties in the ruling coalition, the civil service, the legislature, the judiciary and the other institutions of Malaysian political, social and economic life. Corruption, nepotism and cronyism gradually manifested themselves as realities through the collective policies of bumiputra equity allocations, bumiputra favoured award of contracts and projects, corporatisation and privatisation of Malaysian Government owned infrastructure, functions and assets.These policies represent the final and most aggressive extensions of the New Economic Policy now garbed as the New Development Policy.

This new "superior" UMNO, the backbone of the ruling coalition, as the election slogans would have it, had transformed the sincere if not flawed programmes of the New Economic Policy to eradicate poverty and reduce communal identification of economic functions into nothing less than an all-out revolution that would put into place an oligarchy: defined as government by a small exclusive class. In an oligarchy the cronies fester around the people in positions of power as flies are drawn to a dungheap.

Privatisation was the instrument of choice to transform national ownership into their own private ownership. In this they were assisted by a booming stock market in the early nineties made possible by the free inflow of foreign institutional funds looking for good investments. Together with an unprecedented number of public listings, the attendant allocation of bumiputra shares readily financed by a crony-linked financial insitutions; a massive proportion of corporate equity passed into bumputra hands. The question being into which bumiputra hands ?

The dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO sought to consolidate their hold on power by emerging as an inner circle of oligarchs; a malevolent mafia of power brokers bent on acquiring a vastly disproportionate share of wealth through their proxies: using various permutations of families, friends and fronts. Their efforts were justified as going towards the development of the Bumiputra Entrepreneurial Community, a key objective of the New Development Policy. Instead the dominant strain sought in reality to transcend their political power by arrogating to themselves sufficient economic power to perpetuate their dominance. In effect, bumiputra sub-groups of wealth differentiated by their closeness to the centre of power were being formed: the UMNOputras, Mentriputras, the Anwarputras, Daimputras and Mahathirputras. A policy of broad communal preference was subverted into a policy of specific individual preference.

This subverted policy is best exemplified by the favouring of the Prime Minister's family. Mirzan's foray into the transportation business, the attempt to make him the "czar" of the industry, Mokhzani's positioning in the healthcare business and Mukhriz's
involvement in the fibre-optics business has less to do with their business acumen than their father's strategic positioning of his children in industries that they could control for generations to come. The policy of privatisation provided the means and the
grand master plans such as the Multimedia Super Corridor provided the opportunities. And this was much the same for the other favoured sons in the super bumiputra entrepreneurial community. It is not a pre-requisite to know the business well; a penchant for acquiring business through financial paper transactions and managing businesses like managing assets will do. Technocrats, it seems can always be hired and made to do the hard and dirty work. Ownership is the paramount objective; specifically in the hands of these few.

The National Economic Action Council, now the operative cabinet recently promoted the success of privatisation and its socio-economic achievements; citing the extremely successful North South Highway. Yet all that privatisation has ensured is that state-owned assets and monopolies have passed into a few private hands, created corporations heavily geared and exposed to debt, both domestic and foreign. An all-encompassing system of patronage provides the "trickle down effect" of this wealth into the Malay community of project contractors and sub-contractors, service providers and employees, ensuring their dependency on the inner circle of super bumiputra entrepreneurs. Yet, the high growth of the last decade was merely an artificial boom created through leveraging the financial system making ; making the policy of privatisation look good and projecting the illusion of prosperity among those excluded from the inner circle. That the NEAC chose to use the bogey of "an alternative scenario of tragic ethnic violence" shows how the inner circle persists in disguising their true acqusitive motivations under the cloak of purportedly addressing issues of inter-communal instabilities.

The crux of the issue has really gone past that of communal issues now. Greed is a most powerful motivator and a most infectious one at that. Having promoted values that "to get rich is glorious", to paraphrase a late Asian leader, money politics and corruption has inevitably set in to rot the party at it very core. With their vast wealth, the indulgences of leaders in money, property and the various vices began to escalate. Both power and wealth become powerful drugs, opiates if you must, creating hallucinations and delusions of invincibility and infallibility. As with all tragedies in history, prolonged exposure to power and wealth diminishes one's ability to distinguish the line between moral right and moral wrong. Because of the vast wealth of its leaders, UMNO has become a most corrupted party: its members are motivated by wealth acquisition; to secure contracts, network to be in favour of the powerful and to get rich in all its glory.

With the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, the illusion of wealth and prosperity has disappeared like yesterday's dream. During these difficult times, quarrels easily start and fighting breaks out among the oligarchs over the preservation of their wealth. Because their vast wealth is at stake, leaders are blinded to the normal standards of decency that must be upheld. Such open infighting motivated by greed is alien to the Malay race. The epic battle between Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat was fought over ideals and principles of loyalty, justice and brotherhood. Today the fight is over nothing but wealth. When the essence of the Malay race has been subjugated to the paramount interest of wealth, is it not the saddest thing ?

The Malay race has not been known as an overtly acquisitive people. The antecedants of Malay royalty were the pirate chiefs roaming the Malay archipelago long before the arrival of Islam, trading influences and the colonising powers. The successful pirates established dominance, instituted control over their spheres of influence and manifested Sultanates. The Malay trait of acquisition was until then initially expressed as piracy and subsequently as feudal regimes to gain hegemony and subservience of their subjects. Trade as the alternative mode of acquisition was practised by the visiting Arabic and Indian merchants and later by the Chinese brought into the region by the mercantile Europeans. The acquisitive trading skills of all these other communities threatened the yet undeveloped Malay race used to the feudal practice of acquiring wealth through rent rather than trade.

Hence, the argument goes, for the need for the insulation of the race until the headstart of a few centuries can be overcome by the establishment of a true bumiputra entrepreneurial communnity, one that can take on the other communities without assistance from the Government. Yet the policies of privatisation being implemented today are nothing more than a sophisticated "piratisation" or "rentierism" of the feudal era; the acquisition of wealth for its own sake adds only paper wealth and documents of debt to the Malay community and nothing of intrinsic value. The party politics of UMNO today has more to do with the zero-sum politics of wealth acquisition through privatisation rather than one of the positive politics of wealth creation through entrepreneurship.

The present policies in favour of a few in the inner circle work against the emergence of a true bumiputra entrepreneurial community. Promoting dependence on a system of patronage dominated by the inner circle of the dominant strain, an oligarchy, the Malay community will not be incentivised to compete in an open environment that would encourage "creating" and adding to the pool of wealth rather they are merely "taking" from the pool of wealth. Intoxicated with the heady madness of greed the oligarchy has put their own interests ahead that of the Malay community; in the process practically undoing all the real progress that the Malay community had made in the three decades before this last one.

Ummi Hafilda , one of the genre of the Melayu Baru, unabashedly and shamelessly claims to have acted in the interests of the race, party and country in doing what she did to expose the "animal with the human face". The results of her actions one year ago have exposed instead the beast in a political party in power that has placed material gains far above the principles of justice and unselfish commitment to the community and country.

Paksanno