UMNO elections a time for
reinvention By Anil Netto
PENANG, Malaysia - As this country's largest
political party holds its general assembly and party
elections in the cavernous convention hall of the Putra
World Trade Center, challenges on the social and
economic front are making it clear that the dominant
United Malays National Organization (UMNO) will have to
sacrifice some of its nationalist rhetoric to deal with
changing realities.
Gathered delegates will also
be wary of the unmentionable political challenge posed
by recently freed former party stalwart Anwar Ibrahim,
branded a traitor by the party's youth wing on
Wednesday. All such challenges are proving potentially
tricky for UMNO to negotiate.
Basking in the
limelight after a sweeping general-election victory in
March and the feel-good factor following Anwar's
release, UMNO president and Prime Minister Abdullah
Badawi presented his maiden speech as head of the party
assembly on Thursday morning. He dug in for a confident
performance and received a standing ovation.
His
speech came a day after the UMNO youth election, in
which delegates had jeered and booed each time the name
of his son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, was mentioned. The
booing indicated unhappiness at the way Khairy, 28, had
won the post of UMNO deputy youth head uncontested, in
line with an understanding not to have contests for the
top posts in each wing - supposedly to preserve party
unity.
The Mahathir factor was also evident at
Wednesday's election. Former Malaysian premier Mahathir
Mohamad's son Mukhriz won the highest number of votes in
the youth committee, while another Mahathir loyalist,
Rafidah Aziz, retained her position as uncontested head
of the women's wing.
At the party's general
assembly, Abdullah dwelt at length on the need for the
majority Malays to come to terms with the challenges of
globalization. Expounding on his concept of Islam
hadari, or progressive Islam, he urged Muslims to
equip themselves with greater knowledge while taking
more interest in science and technology.
Muslims
in Malaysia were called to integrate worldly development
with preparations for the afterlife, as Abdullah
promised to step up rural development to stem the
rural-to-urban drift, especially among the Malays in
kampongs (villages) who are lured by the bright
city lights. It was rousing stuff, minus the stern
lecturing and scolding of his predecessor, Mahathir.
But whether it hit the nail on the head of what
ails Malaysia is debatable. Abdullah's speech didn't
much probe the quality of the country's educational
institutions, which have a vital role in equipping
Malaysians for the challenges of the knowledge economy
and globalization.
Malaysia is increasingly
feeling the pinch of regional economic competition,
especially from China, where wage costs are lower.
Nowhere is this felt more than in Penang, Malaysia's
"Silicon Island" - although recent export figures appear
rosy. Malaysia's economy has expanded, benefiting from
soaring demand for computer chips and other manufactured
goods, which account for about 80% of its exports.
Not everyone is euphoric. "Quite frankly, I
worry about the future of Penang," said one government
official familiar with the electronics industry.
Penang's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita used to
be above the national level in 1995. By 2000, however,
the state's per capita GDP had fallen below the national
average. Penang contributes more than 60% of the
country's electronics exports, a major revenue earner.
"There's hardly any new FDI [foreign direct
investment] coming into Penang," the official said
privately. This is worrying, he said, as the Penang
economy, heavily dependent on electronics and tourism,
is not as diversified as the national economy.
Penang - and Malaysia in general - is often seen
as hub for low-end manual tasks such as assembly and
testing, and not as much for high-tech design,
development and high-end assembly work.
Analysts
say simple assembly-line work will leave Malaysia
vulnerable as electronics firms move out at the drop of
a hat to countries where the labor cost is lower.
Malaysia, they say, has to move upstream and start
designing its own electronics products, beginning with
chips, and eventually aim at creating clusters of
collaborative factories, supplying one another while
upgrading fabrication facilities.
But for that
to happen, Malaysia needs knowledgeable workers with the
right skills, creativity and analytical thinking - and
that simply is not happening fast enough. "There is a
gap between what the industry requires and what the
universities are producing, even in technical courses,"
said the government official. Attempts to bridge that
gap have not been hugely successful.
There is a
growing realization that Malaysia's education system is
struggling to propel the country up the rungs of the
knowledge-economy ladder. Faced with regional
competition in the low-end electronics sector, workers
in Malaysia are simply not ready to move up the tech
ladder.
Not surprisingly, large numbers of
graduates remain unemployed. Out of nearly 67,000
unemployed graduates, Malay and other indigenous
graduates make up 49,000. More worrying, more than 90%
of the unemployed graduates are from public
universities. Many of these registered unemployed
graduates are deemed to be lacking in communication
skills (including English) and are not
information-technology-savvy.
"Are we in limbo
or what?" Associate Professor Zainal Abidin Kidam,
director of corporate planning at Universiti Putra
Malaysia, asked in a report published by the
pro-establishment New Straits Times. There is not even
one local university that really excels in either
teaching or research and development, let alone
professional consultancy, he said.
The report
said one obvious reason for the current mediocrity of
Malaysia's universities is the lack of qualified
lecturers: "Malaysia's best brains are simply not
interested in teaching because of poor wages and minimal
incentives."
What the report didn't say was that
many local universities have also suffered a brain drain
after many more qualified lecturers, frustrated by a
lack of recognition and promotion opportunities due in
part to affirmative-action policies, drifted out of the
public setup, with some even migrating abroad.
The lack of academic freedom, declining
standards, rote-learning methods and the lack of
emphasis on thinking and working independently have all
stunted the development of creative and critical
thinking, so crucial in propelling Malaysia up the
knowledge ladder. Couple that with declining standards
of English, and it's not surprising that many graduates
remain unmarketable - and unemployed.
Najib
Razak, the new UMNO deputy president, noting that Malays
are still not on par with non-Malays in all aspects,
outlined an eight-point blueprint. Three of his points
appeared directly aimed at dealing with the malaise
afflicting the labor pool. He urged UMNO members to
master knowledge and education, to embrace the culture
of meritocracy, and to master foreign languages, notably
English.
It's all a far cry from the heyday of
the UMNO nationalist struggle, when Malays looked to
UMNO to defend their economic interests and saw no need
to learn any other language apart from Malay. Najib,
once a fiery - some saw him as chauvinistic -
nationalist youth leader, has had to reinvent himself to
take into account the changing economic realities facing
Malaysia.
Others note the irony of UMNO leaders
calling for meritocracy when the top leaders in each
major wing - the main body, the youth, the women and the
young women - have all been elected uncontested,
ostensibly in accordance with the will of the delegates.
"Such an innovative system has engendered certain
consequences," wrote political scientist Abang Benet in
a commentary. "Chiefly, the UMNO system of democratic
contest for [top] party positions, which was once the
only system of democratic contest in the country, is now
well and truly buried."
The result is obvious.
"In the process, political principles are overlooked,
political performance is untested, political ideas are
unexamined, political commitment to democratic civil
society is unaccounted for, liberal democratic practices
are cast to the wind, and intense dissatisfaction at the
lack of internal party democracy is either ignored or
contained," wrote Benet.
In the absence of
elections for the top two posts (party president
Abdullah and deputy party president Najib have reclaimed
their posts unopposed) the focus of attention now shifts
to the vice presidents' posts. Much attention will focus
on dark-horse Shahrir Samad, who is widely seen as a "Mr
Clean" and is one of seven candidates vying for three
posts. His success or failure will indicate to what
extent UMNO delegates have taken heed of Abdullah's
anti-graft rhetoric and whether they are serious about
wiping out "money politics" (a euphemism for
vote-buying), widely perceived as deeply rooted in the
party.
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