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By Mihar Dias (C) Copyright December 2022
We have always suspected that UMNO as a political party appears to be digging its own grave since its first major defeat to PH in 2018.
However we dared not voice our opinions for fear of reprisals.
We saw how badly trounced they were in 2018, yet they did not want to learn from their post mortem (if they had conducted one then after GE14).
Back then Najib who led the party resigned immediately when UMNO lost badly to Pakatan Harapan.
But not so for Zahid who is clinging to the presidency instead of quitting the post after the election.
Anyway our suspicion is now confirmed, when one of Putrajaya's ex deputy division head, Tun Faisal Ismail Aziz, said that the party is digging its own grave although its depth is yet undetermined.
He said "UMNO had not learnt its lesson from the last general election in 2018, when it lost for the first time to Pakatan Harapan (PH)."
Instead, it continues to make (same?) mistakes in the run-up to GE15. These serious mistakes were the reason for the greater loss they suffered in the most recent election.
Tun Faisal said the main reason why voters reject UMNO is mostly because of the background of its own leaders who have become liabilities to the party.
For example, individuals perceived to be tainted with corruption and other criminal charges continued to be nominated as candidates. That was one major mistake repeated in 2022.
As a result, Tun Faisal said, voters (including UMNO members and sympathisers themselves) switched camps and supported Perikatan Nasional (PN) instead because of "dissatisfaction with the stance of their president, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi."
Consequently, BN-UMNO coalition's reduced the number of its parliamentary seats from 79 in 2018 to only 30 in 2020.
UMNO itself lost from 54 seats in GE14 to a mere 26 in 2020. Even Zahid the president himself struggled to win his Bagan Datuk seat. He scraped by with only a 348-vote majority.
Since then Tun Faisal said UMNO continues "it dug its grave even deeper by agreeing to work with Pakatan Harapan (PH)."
This is where members and supporters are turned off by the action of the party president. "Voters and supporters feel betrayed. They voted for UMNO because of its 'No Anwar, no DAP' tagline. But in the end, cooperation was forged."
However, thanks to the manoeuvring by the party president, UMNO is well represented on the new cabinet. But will UMNO be trusted again in the future?
It has managed to dig a hole for itself in 2018 fielding candidates who were allegedly corrupt, then digging even a deeper one in 2022 by doing more or less the same.
But it did not quit digging, instead it entered into partnership with its old foes PH and become partners in a new government headed by a member expelled by UMNO itself.
This is a grave mistake. This most recent grave is the abyss, so deep from which it will be a major struggle for the party to crawl out of when they go into state elections and years from now when they contest in GE16.
By then the grave they dug may be too deep for UMNO leaders to climb out from.
Their leadership would be generally perceived as being part and parcel of PKR-DAP coalition that their own support base would end up abandoning them for other parties that are more trusted by the Malay electorates.
More would even leave UMNO if Zahid were to remain as President of the party refusing to step down.
In fact, given the above scenario we are looking at the demise of UMNO as early as GE16 unless it is saved by Divine intervention.
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