The jokers at the Umno convention

I have been watching the Umno convention for any ounce of wisdom from their Wanita, Pemuda and Puteri chiefs, but could not detect any in the speeches that they had given in Dewan Merdeka, PWTC, Kuala Lumpur yesterday and the day before.

All of them said pretty much the same thing.

And it is ugly to see how they would outdo each other just to get the loudest and longest applause with the members from the divisions also trying to do the same by cracking some jokes.

These are the jokers of the Umno convention.

I have covered Umno conventions long before most of the Putera and Puteri Umno members were born and know how boring their speeches and opinions can be.

I covered the Umno convention for Utusan Melayu when it was held at the old Hilton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur in 1977. The next year, it was held at the Dewan Syed Nasir of the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP).

The new Umno headquarters and building was not yet built then and the site where the PWTC is now was but a swamp sitting by the side of the Klang River.

What is very depressing today is how the three Umno wing heads could dwell on the same topics year after year.

They do not seem to realize that they are not able to say anything new. This usually means that

they have not learnt much over the last one year to gain better wisdom and ideas on how to develop the potential of the Melayu.

They say things that are not specific. This is how one can tell if they are genuine speakers or just general speakers.

The truth is that Umno leaders like Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, Khairy Jamaluddin and Rosnah Mohd Rashid Shirlin have long been discarded by the Melayu intelligentsia.

They are at the convention because of the votes they managed to get at their division level. But this does not mean they are leaders in their own right. They are just division leaders. And they are not experts.

They do not mix with the crowd even in their own constituencies. They travel everywhere else in the country to seek publicity because in politics, the more a person is seen, the more he or she thinks he is important.

So what good is it for their speeches be analyzed by their own kind at this convention? Do they dare take them to the Melayu and Muslim intelligentsia to see if they are worth the paper they were printed on?

Do they also dare to confront the Melayu scholars and experts and specialists in the different fields, including the film industry for instance?

No, they don't. If they do, they would have come down their high horses to mix with them to get expert views that they could take to the convention for debate and approval and implementation.