COMMENTARY BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER
MAY 21, 2014

It is that silly season again, when Umno gets in a tizzy over more evidence that its grand-sounding statement that Umno is Malay and Malay is Umno is just that, a statement and nothing more.

That umbilical cord between Umno and the Malays was cut a long time ago. And yet they still pretend to be the vanguard of the Malays.

Now, they are feigning indignation that Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud is contesting the Teluk Intan by-election on a DAP ticket. She has been called an ingrate and a traitor. The sheer hypocrisy of the name-callers who tell Malaysians that we should be forever grateful to them.

In keeping with the Umno spirit, the Malaysian Insider offers five reasons we must “tabik” Umno politicians.

1) We must be grateful to Umno because they have blurred all the lines between right and wrong; and wiped out the offence of corruption. There is no more moral quandary thanks to Messrs Najib, Muhyiddin and Mahathir.

Malaysians can live beyond their means, cheat on taxes, buy cars and houses on ill-gotten gains and feel no remorse or guilt. Why? Because all Umno leaders do so. We repeat, all.

There is not one cabinet minister who will pass a lie detector test on how he or she accumulated their wealth and all will fail spectacularly even the most cursory check by the MACC on living beyond their means.

From classic Porsches to apartments in tony suburbs in London, they have it all. So, Malaysians must be grateful to them for showing how to live the good life without a conscience.

2) We must be grateful to Umno for showing us that family is important. Nothing must trump kin in the award of contracts, concessions to sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, sisters, brothers, nephews. You get the picture by now.

So, we have the son-in-law of a senior Umno minister who is the proud owner of a super expensive bio-metric concession; a youngish son-in-law of another senior Umno minister who has a sweet heart deal; a brother of another senior Umno minister who is doing extremely well as a broker for foreign labour.

And then there are the countless children of Umno politicians who have suddenly become very rich individuals, some on the list of the richest men in Malaysia. And we have not even started on the First family and their kin.

So, thank you Umno for showing us that family is important.

3) We must be grateful to Umno because it is no longer an object of derision to spew nonsense in Malaysia; to speak with a forked tongue or to flip-flop on anything.

Ahmad Maslan, Rithuan Tee, Hishammuddin Hussein, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Ahmad Said… To steal a line from a famous budget airline: Now everyone can talk rubbish.

4) We must be grateful to Umno because they have demonstrated how to build up something with sweat and tears over decades and break it up overnight with wayward words and actions.

Granted, the Umno of old played an important role in building up Malaysia but somewhere along the way the culture of rent-seeking, the influx of morally-bankrupt individuals and a surge in chauvinism and fear of losing power combined to turn the ruling party into a wrecking ball.

To cling on to power, Umno has damaged institutions from the judiciary to the police, divided Malaysia along racial and religious lines and destroyed this blessed country. So, thank you for damaging this blessed country.

5) We must be grateful to Umno for charting policies and plans that allowed Malaysia’s education system to be where it is today: in the abyss.

Our primary schoolchildren are lagging behind their counterparts in Vietnam; our universities are non-existent in regional or global rankings; our graduates can’t speak or write proper English and these days, the entry of a product of the education system into Harvard is as rare as the prime minister’s presence in Parliament.

So, thank you Umno. We are grateful. – May 21, 2014.