'Voters not buying into Najib's speech yet'

By Stephanie Sta Maria

PETALING JAYA: Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's oratory at the Umno annual general assembly on Thursday may have won the hearts of delegates but it may not be enough to influence the electorate.



Political observers believed that voters are reserving their support until they see evidence of Najib's assurance that the rights of both Malays and non-Malays are protected.

Dr Ong Kian Ming of UCSI University indicated that voters will assess the totality of a party's performance over a longer period of time rather than focus on the speech of a few leaders in a general assembly.

“Both Malay and non-Malay voters will only react when they see real signs of Umno backing up their words with policy changes and economic results,” he said. “And this is not something that a general assembly or a Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) can deliver.”

Professor Dr Shamsul Amri Baharuddin of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) also agreed that Najib's speech is merely the tip of the iceberg.

“The majority of voters are generally receptive to Najib as a person and are likely to accept whatever ideas he puts across,” he said. “But they will still wait to see the kind of action that follows his words before fully buying into his message.”

However, Shamsul questioned whether Umno had really taken on a tonal shift with regard to race relations.

“To my understanding, Najib only called on people to stop hiding behind neutral terminology like 'human rights' and 'civil society' when they are actually talking about racial issues,” he stated. “I saw no big change in that.”

Tonal shift

Associate Professor Azmi Sharom of Universiti Malaya (UM), meanwhile, dismissed Najib's speech as “the same old Umno rhetoric”. He pointed out that Najib had outlined Umno as a Malay party which essentially meant that it is still stuck in the loop of race-based politics.

“His message was contradictory and clearly not directed at the voters,” he said. “What kind of message is he sending out by talking about 'bloodshed on the streets'?”

“I believe he is trying to simultaneously placate the Umno grassroots and convince the rest of the country that Umno is the 'good guy'. If you have to resort to this to excite your delegates and placate the grassroots, then Umno has not learnt its lesson from 2008.”

Ong added that Najib's attempt to strike a more conciliatory course has unfortunately allowed the opposition to latch onto his words of “crushed bodies”, “lost lives” and “ethnic cleansing” in association with Umno's determination to stay in power.

According to reports, Najib had called on Umno members to defend Putrajaya at all cost from the opposition onslaught in the next general election, even if it meant laying down their lives.

"Even if our bodies are crushed and our lives lost, brothers and sisters, whatever happens, we must defend Putrajaya," he said.

Najib had also reportedly said that “...

in the 20th century, we have seen cases of punishment without trial in the United States, the holocaust tragedy in Europe, the slaughter of Palestinians in the Middle East and the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Rwanda. Imagine, what is the outcome, if every generation of Malaysians question the social contract which were agreed upon by their forefathers.”

Said Ong: “The tonal shift, set by (Umno Youth chief) Khairy (Jamaluddin) and to a lesser extent Najib, is to portray Umno as a more inclusive party that nonetheless remains committed to fighting for the cause of the Malays,” he said. “It is still very much a message about merely 'tolerating' the non-Malays rather than treating them as equal citizens in a country which achieved its independence 53 years ago.”

Azmi said that Umno cannot be the party that leads Malaysia into the future, adding, “if the opposition parties could just stop their infighting, they could turn this to their advantage”.